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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AT LONG AND 
SHORT RANGE 



This Edition is limited to Five Hundred Copies. 



T LONG AND 
SHORT RANGE 

BY WILLIAM 
/RMSTRONG 
JCOLLINS£B© 



PHILADELPHIA & LON- 
DON: J.B.LIPPINCOTT 
COMPANY: MDCCCXCIII 






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Copyright, 1893, 

BY 

J. B. Lippincott Company. 



Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 





jrwNg&sHoigimGE 

HERE is a fashion in pipes as 
well as in bonnets. There 
are men who take unalloyed 
pleasure in a corn-cob bowl 
with an Indian-reed or bam- 
boo stem, who would feel a sense of moral 
degradation in smoking the ordinary Ger- 
man china bowl, and a sense of foppery 
in the meerschaum. There is no arguing 
about such matters. It belongs to a cer- 
tain subtle line of thought and conduct 
which fairly marks one's individuality, 
and you might as well try and make the 
corn-cob smoker wear a conspicuous dia- 
mond breastpin as alter his foibles in the 
affair of a pipe. The simplicity, purity, 
and wholesomeness of his smoking ar- 
rangements are very apt to be the precise 
qualities which he prizes in other con- 
cerns, and it will not uncommonly be 



6 At Long and 

found that his taste is sober in depart- 
ments where taste is involved, and that 
in matters of business fidelity he is apt 
to fulfil his engagements without osten- 
tation and without default. Such a man 
could not be hired to smoke a huge cigar, 
deeming it absolutely vulgar; and his 
entertainments, if he is a family man, will 
be characterized by old-fashioned candor 
and hospitality. That corn-cob pipe means 
more than appears on the surface. It is 
one of the things which do not all end in 
smoke. 



TF one inclines to Carlyle's overestimate 
of Goethe, let him take De Quincey's 
underestimate and strike an average. In 
this instance the middle way is the safest. 



T N the silent watches of the night you are 
suddenly and strangely sensible of an 
uninvited Presence in your bedchamber. 
You know full well that no sound, how- 
ever slight, revealed the opening of the 



Short Range. 7 

door leading to the outer world, and that 
feet shod with down would betray to the 
sentinel ear some alarum which neither 
mind nor ear can now detect. There is a 
figure of mist in the apartment whose out- 
line becomes distinct as the seconds of 
time keep rhythm with trooping thoughts 
and arabesque fancies. A face of spiritual 
beauty fixes the gaze, and you are con- 
scious that eyes of dark blue and full of 
portent rest upon you with an unchanging 
constancy that seems to hush all specula- 
tion and subdue every passion to the 
atmosphere of a land of dreams. The 
pale glory of the face does not so stir 
the soul as its brooding calm and awful 
though infinitely tender serenity. This is 
the spectre upon which you have so often 
meditated, and lo ! the apparition is here 
unbeckoned and unannounced. By what 
swift and fruitful intuition do you realize 
that you are expected to go upon a jour- 
ney, and that you will have strange but 
royal escort ? How tenaciously, after all, 
we cling to the familiar and the known ! 
You shrink from the weird imagination of 
1* 



8 At Long and 

routes that are not upon the maps, and 
look with mute appeal upon the sapphire 
eyes that seem to clothe themselves with 
dread sovereignty as they rest upon you 
in their unchanging loveliness. You would 
fain crave some courteous postponement, 
if but to write deferred letters, or it may 
be to seek reconciliation with the once 
loved and now estranged. With fantastic 
reluctance you brood upon the lateness of 
the hour, perhaps the inclemency of the 
weather; you even quibble with inward 
folly about the deficiencies of your toilet, 
and with morbid delirium of thick-crowd- 
ing fancies try to find some plea or reason 
why it shall be next week or to-morrow — 
any time save now — on which you shall set 
out in the night with One who sent up no 
card, and who does not even so much as 
move one white finger to break the un- 
utterable and fateful splendor of the hour. 
Ah ! foolish soul, be calm. This is no 
time for rebellion or debate. Thy sleep- 
ing-chamber is at last glorified beyond the 
courts of kings, and thy vigil honored by 
the Incarnation of Beauty which the poets 



Short Range. 9 

have worshipped from immemorial time. 
No sinister menace attends this delicate 
tracery of figure, which in frost lines pos- 
sesses the space on which you look with 
such forlorn eyes, and the face which 
haunts you with its unspeakable beauty, 
and already wins your irresolute spirit on, 
will see that no harm betide you in the 
quest you are now to make. Be of good 
cheer. A fairer comrade you have never 
had, and the world's jangle and jars shall 
henceforth vex you nevermore. 



C EX traits open up a curious study. Men 
are influenced by opinions of their 
own and of the other sex. Women are 
largely indifferent to the views of men, 
and are sensitive to the last degree about 
their own kind. They are willing that men 
should admire their beauty, and they will 
marry on occasion ; but here the deference 
to masculine sentiment pretty much ceases. 
The opinion of half a dozen women on a 
moot point weighs more with a woman 
than the judgment of a whole community 



io At Long and 

of men. Women dress for each other, 
suit their manners for each other, copy 
each other, and yet distrust each other, 
whilst they have confidence in and respect 
for the very men whose desires and views 
they substantially ignore. 

It is a singular phenomenon. It shows 
how much more fully rounded the mental 
life of a man is, since he takes in both 
sexes, whilst woman mainly confines her- 
self to one, — viz., her own. 

A woman has one great advantage in her 
dealings with a man. She understands a 
man; but no man ever understands a 
woman. The knowledge is all on one 
side. 

The amusing part of the social relations 
between the sexes is, that men are oblivious 
of the fact that women are always adroitly 
playing a part ; whilst men — good, stupid ; 
souls — are clumsily honest and in earnest. 
If they were permitted to listen to the 
comments of the women on them, they 
would be disagreeably enlightened. 

Man, too, emancipates himself often 
from slavish deference to the opinion of 



Short Range. * n 

his own kind ; but woman never frees her- 
self from slavery to her own sisterhood. 
They rule men and make one another 
everlastingly uncomfortable. It is a com- 
edy of errors. 

A man can talk all around a woman 
about the fundamental principles of taste, 
and the slouchiest sort of man who is of a 
scholarly turn can descant by the hour 
on the essential qualities of the beautiful. 
But give a man a new room, and a woman 
one, and see which really has the instinct 
and the knack for elegance. The man's 
boots and tobacco-pipe will likely be the 
most conspicuous ornaments on entering 
his apartment ; the woman will with deft 
art embellish the meanest-looking chamber. 
She will adorn the walls, have pretty trifles 
on the dressing-case, flowers in season, and 
infuse an atmosphere of pleasing domes- 
ticity in the little retreat. Her delicate 
fingers add grace wherever they rove ; 
whilst the great clumsy man in the midst 
of barbarous confusion will talk with en- 
chanting composure about Plato, and 
define with mathematical precision the 



12 At Long and 

boundaries of aesthetic refinement. Is it 
any wonder that woman, with all her fine 
wit, is amazed at him ? The real wonder 
is how she manages to tolerate him. 



A N essay signed and mailed is not a 

letter, and the fairly readable and 

pleasing epistle, by the necessary laws of 

its own being, makes the most modest and 

self-abnegating person seem like an egotist. 



'T'HE young woman's first successful at- 
tempt at cooking a dinner is a prime 
event in her life ; perhaps, next to an en- 
gagement to be married, the affair in- 
volving the most serious emotion. She 
has approached this great achievement by 
gradations. Furtive observations in the 
kitchen, experiments with candy-making, 
an occasional trial at boiling an egg or 
preparing a cup of tea, stealthy perusal of 
cook-books, and confidential talks with 
young friends who have passed the Rubi- 
con and actually got up a whole repast, — 



Short Range. 13 

these have been the preludes to the mo- 
mentous day when she announces to her 
mamma that she intends to cook the din- 
ner, and every fifteen minutes thereafter 
comes to the said mamma for counsel as 
to the details. However, the dinner is 
cooked, and let us suppose it is a success, 
— soups, meats, vegetables, pastry. The 
young conqueror's face is flushed with 
the caress of the stove and the glow of 
triumph. She expects and she receives 
rich largess of compliments. She notes 
with solicitous eye that the viands are 
appreciated. She expands with a sense of 
maturity, and in fancy presides over a 
household of her own. She has taken a 
fresh degree in the university of life, and 
will with mild and affectionate patronage 
tell the artless of her own sex who have 
never tried conclusions with the larder 
and the kitchen how easy, after all, it is to 
one who has the nerve and the knowledge, 
— the last word in italics. Happy maiden 
and thrice happy household who share her 
victory and toast her Queen of the Board, 
worthy daughter of a worthy and loving 



14 At Long and 

mother! This is a festival for garlands, 
and the charmed graces might hold it an 
honor to scatter them. 



''FHE world graciously consents that one 
may be sad in private for the loss of 
money, health, or kindred, and takes its 
revenge by sneering at every other form 
of sorrow. 



TT must be both flattering and amusing 
to the young lady between the ages 
of eighteen and twenty-five to find that 
the poet and the novelist discover so much 
that is interesting in her. In actual life 
men usually find married ladies who have 
reached the age of thirty more entertain- 
ing in an intellectual sense than mere chits 
of girls, who are not commonly gifted with 
wisdom of any kind, and who rarely have 
discrimination concerning men. More 
than half the novels, however, deal with 
these young creatures and surround them 
with a halo that flows from the fancy of 



Short Range. 15 

the writers rather than attaches to the 
young damsels themselves. There has 
been so much of this imaginative business 
going on in poems and in fiction, not to 
speak of the work of the painter, that the 
young women must at times be a little 
puzzled to know if they really are what 
they are depicted to be. Youth and 
beauty and innocence and grace have 
charms which will always appeal to the 
soul, but the novelist is not content to 
celebrate these. He makes his heroine 
have thoughts that fit her for another 
sphere than the one she lives in, and en- 
dows her with longings that she is not apt 
to disclose to associates of her own sex. 
The novelist does not pause long on her 
fondness for dress and caramels. 

Sentimental novelist. Eccentric poet. 



TN time of "storm and stress" we dis- 
trusted as a will-o'-the-wisp that fine 
audacity of spirit which we feared might 
guide us to some fresh bog or quagmire. 
In time of ease we often sigh for the lam- 



1 6 At Long and 

bent flame, and would gladly follow it 
again along tortuous roads and under 
gathering clouds. 



T^HE gross utilitarian spirit unwittingly 
compliments those whom it intends 
to annihilate with a word, when it chooses 
that winged fairy of the air and meadow, 
the emancipated, the innocent, the beauti- 
ful, the happy butterfly, as a symbol for 
scorn. 

The Greeks were not so clumsy. 



"VTO one is in doubt when the sun has 
announced that it is seated on the 
throne, and no one needs any argument or 
persuasion to realize the spell of a com- 
manding personality when such appears 
either in the arena of actual life or upon 
the phantom boards where life's panorama, 
with all its incidents and emotions, is 
marshalled to view. The ring of the true 
metal is known to the gallery as well as to 
the dress-circle, and the dramatic reviewer 



Short Range. 17 

has only the pleasing task of ratifying the 
verdict of the street. 



*T*HE happiest man, after all, is, perhaps, 
the one whose soul's delight is in the 
pleasures of the table. The frescos of 
Raphael and the symphonies of Beethoven 
are as naught to him compared with boiled 
bass flavored with anchovy sauce, venison 
with currant jelly, olives and Cheddar 
cheese. Give him a chicken fricassee, and 
you may establish any government and 
religion. Milton's " Lycidas" has no 
charms for him, but his spirit expands with 
tranquil rapture over a fillet of beef flanked 
with macaroni baked a V Italienne. He 
wastes no thought over dry discussions of 
tariff and currency, his imagination being 
occupied with sugar-cured ham, and he 
lingers long and lovingly over the nuts and 
wine. It is not every one who is equal to 
such felicities. A man must have native 
capacity and adequate training to make a 
superb feeder. When one has reached the 
stage where clam chowder and shrimp salad 



1 8 At Long and 

can inspire the whole man with delicate 
ecstasy like a faint perfume from distant 
orange-groves, there is little more to be 
said or done ; that man will never repine 
until his stomach or cash gives out. The 
table is to him a temple of all joys, and 
the clatter of the waiters more melodious 
than brooks that whisper through the 
woods and meadows at nightfall. His face 
beams with benevolent satisfaction. His 
nose has the generous tint of a boiled lob- 
ster. His hands are as velvet, and his eyes 
have an Oriental film of dreams over them 
like the haze of balmy Indian summer. 
Poor Csesar might have had a happier end- 
ing if he had let the Gauls alone and de- 
voted himself to oysters and ortolans. 
The genial gourmand is the true sage, the 
real philosopher. He finds the colors of 
Titian in celery and cranberries, and 
wonders why Malloch could be so absurd 
as to inquire if life were worth the living, 
seeing that the beef- tongue is as it should 
be, and the gherkins and chow-chow up to 
the standard. The melancholy thinkers 
can solve all their dismal doubts by drop- 



Short Range. 19 

ping in at the nearest hotel at the fashion- 
able dining hour. There they will find 
rubicund potentates who disprove Burns' s 
notion that man was made to mourn. 
"Sir John," said the chief-justice, "your 
age should be seasoned with gravity." 
" Nay, my lord, with gravy !" Your good 
feeder is the true master of the earth. 



r^ERTAIN sounds, such as a deep-toned 
bell or the discharge of a cannon, 
sensibly affect the imagination, and that 
not by the mere volume of sound, as we 
discover when we come to think of the 
matter. 



T N many well-regulated families they have 
what is called a getting-up or " rising" 
bell, and after that the breakfast-bell. The 
crying grievance of the good-wife and 
mother, presiding mistress of the house, is, 
that the family will not respond to the first 
summons, and often not even to the second. 
It frequently takes four or five bells to get 
2* 



20 At Long and 

the laggards down, and meanwhile the 
worthy housewife and the cook are in a 
state of nervous irritation. The various 
delinquents of the family ranch urge in 
extenuation that they do not hear the bells, 
and the good-wife threatens to get a bell 
as big as an old-fashioned tavern one, which 
will cause a protest from the entire neigh- 
borhood. This awful threat is rarely car- 
ried out. Why is it, anyway, that one 
hates to honor the draft of the first bell? 
A person who has been restless for hours, 
and waiting for daylight for an excuse to 
get up, will become drowsy as soon as the 
warning bell sounds its imperative demand. 
A man or woman troubled with insomnia 
so strong as to defy potassium, chloral, and 
hypodermic injections of morphine, will 
sleep like a lamb as soon as the rising-bell 
begins to tintinnabulate. No sermon, how- 
ever lulling, can close the eyelids and sub- 
due the senses to seraphic calm like the 
voluble cadence of the little rising-bell. 
As soon as its first faint note reaches the 
sleeping-apartment, the troubled spirit for- 
gets all its cares and composes itself for 



Short Range. 21 

pleasant dreams. The housewife and cook 
below may fret and fume, but the happy 
sleepers above are in a fresh heaven of 
perfectly angelic repose. A rising-bell 
would cause a man to forget his debts and 
a woman to let even the thought of skirts 
and flounces melt into azure nothingness. 
Now, between the rising-bell and the final 
completion of the toilet there is an inter- 
val. Any one who improves that enchanted 
space has stolen a march on time. Therein 
lies the secret of the matter. It is the old 
story, — stolen fruit is sweet. The sailor 
enjoys his hour on shore. The soldier 
lingers in the embrace of his sweetheart. 
The whole world drinks fragrant wine of 
purloined delight when it can disobey the 
rising-bell and for a poor little while rest 
in peace. 



TV/TORE light, if less longevity of candle, 
was the controlling thought of many 
a poet, painter, musician, and orator long 
dead, in the physically rash enterprise of 
burning the candle at both ends, and post- 



22 At Long and 

humous beneficiaries are quite well content 
that it was so. 



TVTO. It is not the most beautiful woman 
or the most accomplished one, or even 
the most industrious one, who ranks first 
in the scale. The truly exemplary woman, 
the noblest of her sex, is the one who can 
take a joke. She is a jewel in society 
and a treasure in the household. Such a 
woman, if married and a mother, will make 
her boys capable and her girls agreeable. 
Her husband will prefer home to the 
clubs, and he will not dream of a pleasure- 
trip without his wife. She will sweeten 
his coffee with a judicious insinuation and 
reconcile him to a failure in the steak by 
pertinent jocosity. Her temper will be 
better than the angelic, for the angels — 
poor souls ! — are not up to the delights 
of humor. This bewitching woman will 
even encourage her husband in the most 
distressing puns, and there is no stroke of 
fortune which she will not turn aside with 
the pretty shield of a disposition bright 



Short Range. 23 

with perennial frolic and amiable grace. 
If you really meditate matrimony, don't 
bother about the young damsel's eyes, her 
fortune, her skill on the piano, or her 
facility in water-colors. See if she can 
take a joke. If she stands that test, her 
mind and heart are A No. 1, and you are 
destined to an enormous share of domestic 
felicity. Such a delightful woman will 
fish you out of the water if you fall over- 
board and make you think half-drowning 
a godsend and wet clothes a beatitude. 
Her very jokes are caressing and her 
subtle wit has caught its sunny tints from 
heaven. There is a world of peace at 
the heart of these beguilements. 



HTHE satin slipper and the brogan are 
biographical, too. 



'T'HE first pair of spectacles marks more 

than a mile-stone. It implies a long 

journey, and that the boundary line of a 

new territory is reached. You may as 



24 At Long and 

well hunt up your passport and take out 
your pocket-dictionary for a strange vo- 
cabulary. The flying skirts of youth van- 
ish in the purple distance, and the russet 
hues of middle age stealthily color the 
whole landscape. It makes no difference 
that they are unbidden ; they have come 
to stay, and they will not take livelier tints 
as the sands run out of the hour-glass. 



'T'HERE being a great deal of mystifica- 
tion and no little positive misrepre- 
sentation concerning the feminine sphinx, 
we suggest a clue to the entire riddte, — 
viz., if you wish to know the genuine 
excellence of the feminine nature, make a 
study of old ladies. These were in their 
time the "giddy girls" about whom men 
prate so condescendingly. See what they 
now are in all their ripened wisdom and 
goodness ; what safe counsellors and stanch 
friends ; how they serve as social centres 
where all reputable things naturally clus- 
ter; what mellow grace, resignation, gen- 
tleness, constancy, sympathy, tact, pru- 



Short Range. 25 

dence, and candor. You doubtless know 
many cynical and utterly selfish old men. 
How many old ladies of this kind do you 
know? If men are naturally better and 
wiser than women, why do they not show 
it when they become old ? There is a 
test that can readily be applied. Look 
around at the frivolous or profane or 
avaricious or sensual old men, and then 
compare these men with the dignified and 
gracious and kindly old ladies who are 
the delight of the young and the safe 
advisers of the middle-aged, who give 
real character to homes and make life 
itself noble. Why this incessant prattle 
about the innocent gayety of girls and 
young women during the fleeting period 
between eighteen and twenty-five ? Even 
then they might safely compare notes with 
the masculine youth ; but if you desire to 
determine what was and is in these young 
lassies whom you think only fit to dress 
and talk about dress, follow their career 
until their souls are ripened, and then say 
whether they did not always have more 
purity, goodness, and nobility than the 



26 At Long and 

vainglorious sex which sits in censorship 
upon them. 



"\X7"E strongly sympathize with Charles 
Lamb's notion, that Shakespeare's 
masterpieces are so pre-eminently mind- 
studies that they are fitter for the closet 
than the stage. Still, we are bound to 
remember that they were written for the 
stage. They can be acted, if not up to 
their mighty measure, and we are glad we 
have seen Forrest's "Lear," Cushman's 
"Lady Macbeth," Booth's "Hamlet," 
Hackett's " Falstaff," Neilson's "Rosa- 
lind," and Salvini's "Othello." 



"\A/"HAT becomes of the gold-headed 
canes? A certain number of them 
are every year presented by affectionate 
employ6s to those over them in authority, 
and in other days doctors, bankers, and 
well-to-do fat men, without regard to vo- 
cation, used to carry such highly respect- 
able sticks. Nowadays one hardly ever 






Short Range. 27 

encounters a gold-headed cane. It has 
vanished with ruffled shirts, Addisonian 
speech, and Grand isonian manners. There 
was something eminently solid and de- 
corous and dignified about those canes. 
It is true it required peculiar conditions 
to suit the cane. A short, stout man 
could carry one; but not a short, lean 
man. The cane harmonized well with a 
florid complexion and iron-gray whiskers. 
It was adapted to a deliberate gait and 
a well-kept bearer. It could be safely 
presumed that the possessor of the cane 
would have turkey in season, and that 
he would carve with judgment. Such 
a cane always fitted in with meetings of 
bank directors, and gave tone to funerals. 
It was not unbecoming in church, and it 
added weight to the family circle. It is 
not at all likely that any dog, save the 
shabbiest cur, ever attacked a man carrying 
a gold-headed cane, or even barked at him. 
The disappearance of the gold-headed cane 
may be taken as an evidence of the spread 
of democracy, not to speak of rank com- 
munism. This consequential stick is not 
3 



28 At Long and 

found in farm-houses, and sea-captains only 
carry it when off duty. It is a wonder that 
justices of the peace do not revive the gold- 
headed cane. As there are no beadles to 
make a move towards the restoration of the 
cane, the magistrates ought to bring it in 
fashion again. It looks fine on a day when 
the sun is shining, and gives an air to all 
things sublunary. 



HPHE politeness of assent, in matters that 
are indifferent, is the most innocent 
and justifiable hypocrisy which the social 
world has devised. 



'"THE world is full of sermons. The thief 
cannot escape their cadences, nor the 
red-handed assassin. 

Abolish every church, and these sermons 
go on. They cut surer and deeper than 
the surgeon's knife. Their impressive and 
often appalling tones are heard when most 
of the world is wrapped in slumber. 

They have no set hour or need of ex- 



Short Range. 29 

traneous aids to give them weight. They 
are more than words. They are forces 
which come to avenge. They seize the 
body and the mind and the soul. They 
apportion justice, and mercy can come 
later on. 

Every jail and almshouse and hospital 
and court-room and squalid tenement- 
house is haunted by the drear suggestions 
of one of these sermons, and there are 
thousands of haggard men and women who 
have them inscribed in their faces and 
carved in their hearts. 



l\ '"THERE is some strong sympathetic 
bond between two human beings who 
can be cheerfully silent when together for 
the period of one half-hour. 



'THIRTY-SIX years ago I surveyed from 
a commanding eminence at Round 
Top, Texas, an imperial prairie exhibi- 
tion, — billows upon billows of grass, clumps 
of trees, flashing little rivulets, and an un- 



3<3 At Long and 

utterable zone of horizon. In later years 
I witnessed at Big Lake George, Florida, 
the milk-white apparition of day at her 
first toilet, and still later I saw, in pass- 
ing from the main hall of a steamship 
ploughing its way from Savannah to New 
York, the sun going down on one side of 
the vessel in a conflagration of color, and 
on the other side the moon — 

" Sweet regent of the sky" — 

reporting for its appointed ministry. And 
somehow these bits of recollection confuse 
the calendar and troop together as if there 
were no dates for them or me. 



T^HE world still genially prizes the genial 
traits of Burns and Lamb, and has 
not yet forgiven Byron's cynicism. 



TF any one of mature years, who has 

sincerely and with present militant 

fervor conceived and appropriated the 

Christ idea, could "wind up" with life 



Mtt*a«BgjjgjHa 



Short Range. 31 

and all its concerns in a week or, at most, 
a month, that particular mortal might 
hope to remain of the same frame of mind 
and behavior ; but the years, with the in- 
surrections of the flesh and the worse 
impingements of human mind and tide, 
do play havoc with the high vision and 
the glorified resolve. 



''THAT a certain pensiveness should creep 
into the literature of nations as they 
grow old seems as inevitable as the like 
mood with individuals. Is it in each case 
a forewarning presage of decay and death ? 



TS the intellect so icy cold ? How about 
the chess devotee ? The lover does not 
excel him in ardor. He, like the lover in 
his fine frenzy, is alternately in the highest 
heaven or deepest deep. He has patience, 
anxiety, hope, wonder, depression, and 
delight. Time is obliterated while he 
ponders over wooden or ivory knights, 
rooks, pawns, etc., and hunger and thirst 
3* 



32 At Long and 

fail to assail him. And all for a puzzle 
that addresses only certain faculties of the 
mind ! 



TV/TAGNIFY that toy drum, and presto ! 
the hidden eye discerns the gleam 
of bayonets and the ear notes the sombre 
boom / boom ! ! like the angry breakers of 
the sea. 



AITE can accept Caesar or Socrates (being 
mere men, though very great ones) 
as historical personages without calling in 
the imagination to re-enforce our ideas of 
the soldier or the sage ; but the imagination 
will prove a most helpful ally when we en- 
deavor to realize the Christ sinlessly human 
and eternally divine. It might be brought 
to white heat, and would be engaged in its 
highest and holiest work. 

The Catholic Church has appreciated 
this, and by images and paintings tried to 
convey to the torpid mind an idea of how 
Christ appeared at different stages of His 



Short Range. 33 

career on earth ; but the aroused and con- 
centrated imagination will not be satisfied 
with a vision of Christ teaching His dis- 
ciples in parables, or expiring on the cross. 
It will marshal its energy to realize, if 
possible, the very nature of this human- 
divine Being, so that all our faculties may 
cluster about Him, and perchance, with 
grace, seek to conform to His image. 



HPHERE is a certain quality of laugh that 
is no mean barometer of health and 
happiness. 



ANY honest looking-glass reflects and 
reveals the sort of cage in which the 
human spirit just now dwells ; but the 
spirit must fashion its own mirror in order 
to get some ghost-image of itself and 
disclose its form and lineaments to any 
friendly eye. 

And so, after much travail with the animal 
nature, its clamor and its needs, and after 
those orderly social provisions in charge of 



34 At Long and 

the sagacious intellect, this still unrecog- 
nized spirit, without mirror or photograph, 
deftly, cunningly, perseveringly, begins 
at its own portrait — labor of love, pain, 
wonder, and hope — in statuary, architect- 
ure, painting, musical structures of sound 
with keys, strings, tubes, and words, deco- 
rative touches manifold and minute in the 
public and private world, and in occasional 
deeds outside the domain of mere utility 
or in some curious felicities of dealing 
with the commonplace, so as to put it, too, 
in touch with the riddle of the beautiful. 
And this is the secret industry under the 
advertised activities which proclaim their 
purpose, the ever quest of the spirit, which 
knows too well its cage, at last to get some 
glimpse of itself. Too restless to wait for 
the grave, it still moulds and clothes the 
ever-changing ghost, and has not yet the 
hardihood to declare, " Eureka ! It is I." 



QOMPUTED by the law standards of 

men, the bad are a decided minority, 

— a mere fraction. Tried by the Divine 



Short Range. 35 

standards, they are a vast majority. Man's 
laws deal only with acts. God's laws with 
moods, thoughts, and conditions of spirit 
as well as with acts. 



n^HAT magnificent bird technically 
known by ornithologists as Bonasa 
umbellus, and familiarly, but wrongly, 
styled pheasant by rural people in the 
West and partridge by the New England 
people, is now ready for the sportsman. 
The leaves have fallen early this fall, and 
the foliage will not embarrass the lover 
of field- and wood- sports who has energy 
enough to climb the hills and invade the 
hemlock thickets where our finest game- 
bird makes his abode. There is no sport 
in the way of small game which will com- 
pare with it. The tremendous velocity of 
the bird's flight, its cunning in placing 
itself behind trees in the line of its flight, 
the densely-wooded haunts which suddenly 
secrete it, the beauty of its plumage, and 
the startling whir of its uprising, louder 
than that of a whole covey of quail on the 



36 At Long and 

wing, make the sport absolutely enchanting 
to the practised gunner whose nerves are 
cool enough for such a pastime. Snipe, 
duck, woodcock, quail, plover, curlew, and 
the pinnated grouse (our prairie-chicken) 
present abundant attractions. There is a 
singular pleasure in being poled through 
the marshes of the Kankakee and thrilled 
by the surprise of mallards in their aquatic 
home, and the joys of autumn woodcock- 
shooting have been told by many a winter's 
fireside ; but none of these compare with 
the exhilaration of ruffed-grouse-shooting. 
What a glory to be in the hills, to as- 
cend and descend precipitous places, cross 
tangled ravines, and plunge into dark-green 
thickets, — thickets of evergreens, — and, 
when least you expect it, have this glorious 
bird rise with a sound of mild thunder and 
flash like a thing of beauty upon the vision ! 
This puts the keen sportsman to the test. 
There is no time to deliberate. What he 
does must be done quickly and done well. 
Then to rest at noonday with your gun 
leaning upon some old log, your faithful 
setter sharing your lunch, and away below 



Short Range. 37 

you some little rivulet telling its old sweet 
legends as it gurgles along, with just a bit 
of blue sky smiling through the roof of the 
forest, is a memory to last as long as life 
lasts. The sportsman takes out the shin- 
ing spoils of his foray and looks with rare 
pleasure upon the radiant bird, with its 
black ruff and its mottled feathers, — a pleas- 
ure which the Wilson snipe, the Virginia 
quail, and the charming wood-duck can 
never give. There is a difference in hunt- 
ing in the hills and the stubble-fields. 
Every real lover of nature has felt it. 
Sometimes the sportsman on the hills 
reaches an altitude which commands a fine 
panorama of picturesque scenery, and the 
air blows fresh and cool and bracing upon 
him. He then descends into gorges and 
is lost in the mazes of the woods. This 
alternation of light and shade gives a weird 
and romantic flavor to ruffed-grouse-shoot- 
ing. Quail-shooting is usually done in 
company, and there is wanting the inex- 
pressible charm of solitude which the hill 
gunner has. Next to grouse-shooting we 
would certainly place water-sports, includ- 



38 At Long and 

ing boating in such streams as the Kan- 
kakee, or in the lakes that are shallow and 
overgrown with vegetation. Mountain 
grouse-shooting is not to be recommended. 
It is unnecessarily laborious. The best 
spots for this sport that we at present recall 
are in the lower end of Alleghany County, 
Pennsylvania, and in parts of Beaver and 
the contiguous counties in the same State. 
Go off the lines of railroad, hire a wagon 
to take you miles back in the almost in- 
accessible regions, make what accommo- 
dations you can with any one living in such 
secluded spots ; then get your gun and dog 
in order, and prepare to work and enjoy 
life as you never did over the wine-cup, or 
at shows, or in society, or with books, or 
with the choicest meditations of your soul 
in its happiest moments. Take our word 
for it, if ever you spend a couple of weeks 
in successful ruffed-grouse-shooting, the 
zigzag snipe, the swift and pretty quail, the 
prairie-chicken, and we might almost say 
the whistling teal and superb woodcock 
will be relatively tame to you ever after- 
wards. 



Short Range. 39 

"DIRRELL'S essay on Gibbon and Low- 
ell's on Landor are happy specimens 
of playfully judicial criticism, criticism that 
is at once friendly and discriminating. 



HTHE wild-goose is the greatest traveller 
extant, but he is only a goose after 
all. When Jefferson was in Europe he not 
only seized upon ideas which were to form 
a part of the American Constitution, but 
he brought back valuable seeds to enrich 
our agriculture. Great natural powers or 
fine training are requisite to make travel 
fruitful. 



*T*HE capacity for downright, hearty ad- 
miration or liking for something or 
somebody is not wholly extinct even in the 
literature of this material age, as we dis- 
cover in Augustine Birrell's animated essays 
on Cardinal Newman, Matthew Arnold, 
Hazlitt, and Lamb. There is a colloquial 
freshness and zest in the handling of these 
names, with all they signify, as if the former 
4 



40 At Long and 

owners of the names were in no sense dead, 
but most abundantly alive. 



TN the lighter critical essays it does not 
behoove the writer to obtrude too 
much scholarship. The professor to his 
own habitat. 



■LJUMANITARIANISM, a lovingly sym- 
pathetic attitude towards Nature 
(pointed out by Humboldt in his " Cos- 
mos"), and music, which rivals if it does 
not surpass the other arts, as distinctively 
separate the modern from the antique 
world as does the wonderful aptitude for 
the physical sciences. 



'HPHE landscape-painters who have es- 
sayed by brilliant color effects to 
transfer Nature to their canvas have not 
fared so well as those artists who, with 
sobriety of spirit, have endeavored by the 
management of light and shade to repro- 



Short Range. 41 

duce what they have not only seen, but 
deeply felt, by cliff, forest, and stream, in 
velvet meadows and haunted dells. 



'"FHE book-reading and the non-book- 
reading world employ a few words 
which they hold in common, for the com- 
munication of rudimentary wants, and 
there all conference or intellectual com- 
munity ends. They might almost as well 
belong to different species. 



A FFECTATION is the most treacherous 
of all forms of archery. It never hits 
the mark, and at last it disables the hand 
that wields the bow. 



T HAVE a friend, an Ohio lawyer, who 
once told me that, having sadly realized 
that he could not be a very talented or 
gifted man, he consoled himself with the 
thought that there was nothing to prevent 
him being a good man, and that he found 



42 At Long and 

this, on trial, to be by all odds the hardest 
thing he had ever attempted. 



'T'HE world is getting old enough for 
the French and German peoples to 
discard their enmities and make such ex- 
changes of the traits, qualities, and arts in 
which each excels as will help to make a 
more rounded and admirable Frenchman 
and German. 



HPHESE newspaper men do love to di- 
late on the pleasures or pangs of the 
noose, — the noose nuptial and the sheriff's 
noose. 



C)UR newspaper press makes us alto- 
gether too well acquainted with one 
another. The most sensitive and shrinking 
personality can find no screen these days, 
not even one of honeysuckles and morning- 
glories, behind which it can escape ruth- 
less inspection. 



Short Range. 43 

HPHE development of the Roman Cath- 
olic Church in the United States 
may have some police relation, yet, to the 
labor and capital conflicts which periodi- 
cally threaten the public peace. 



"\A7"E recall a picture yet unframed, and 
smile with a sadness 

" That only resembles sorrow 
As the mist resembles the rain," — 

a water-brook with many a bright cascade, 
clustering hills, a fishing-rod leaning mo- 
tionless over the limpid stream, a siesta 
on the rocks. That is all. 



A PART from these things to which we 
set ourselves, there is the life of mere 
animal sensation to reckon with. What 
does it profit one to do this or that with 
expertness, and drag a ball and chain the 
next unmortgaged hour ? We hear of the 
" Corpus Juris." There is also a " Corpus 
Hominis." 

4* 



44 -At Long and 

■\X7"E trust the little minnows are quite 
as happy as they seem to be, dart- 
ing through the clear waters or assembled, 
as sometimes happens, at love-feast, since 
the great fish pursue them and the most 
contemplative angler knows them only as 
"bait." 



THHERE it is again, — a phantom ship 
that looms for a moment against the 
far horizon, its spectral masts and sails of 
mist just visible, and then the clouds shut 
it from sight and the waves which roll 
upon the land bring no tidings. This is 
the enchanted vessel which wistful-eyed 
children who crave beautiful gifts and 
wan-cheeked women who long for sur- 
cease of care have dreamed of, — the 
ship that comes over the sea. In a 
thousand homes the pathetic petition of 
little ones and the sigh of older hearts are 
again and again quieted by those magic 
words, "Wait until our ship comes over 
the sea!" Ah! blessed compensation for 
so many carking griefs and anxieties, that 



Short Range. 45 

the fancy can still descry across the waste 
of waters the fairy craft, its sails full set, 
and almost hear the boatswain's whistle 
and the song of seamen rejoicing that 
they are coming into port. No matter 
how often the apparition has melted away, 
leaving naught for the eye to rest upon 
but the chafing seas and the restless gulls 
that mock at the chains and dungeons of 
the dull land, the vision, so often de- 
ceiving, will repeat its fond delusions, and 
the toil-worn father at his meagrely-spread 
table will promise all a feast of good and 
kindly things when our ship comes over 
the sea. The aching mother will lull the 
importunities of childhood with these fond 
charmed words, and, trusting in God's 
tender care, the household will retire to 
rest dreaming of the spectral ship whose 
prow is turned landward and whose hull 
is laden with caskets of rare and precious 
store. It is a strange craft, this phantom 
one of the mists; its owners are legion, 
and no underwriter has insured it. The 
young bride who has ventured all for love 
has a share in it ; so have the disappointed 



46 At Long and 

ones to whom life has been harsh ; all ages 
and all sexes and all conditions are inter- 
ested in the vessel and its cargo. That 
pensive lass with the sweet and thoughtful 
face, who sits at yonder window gazing 
into vacancy, sees far over the great surges 
the filmy spars and cordage of the deliver- 
ing vessel that is to bring to her feet the 
prince of her heart, handsome, rich, and 
all devotion ; her widowed mother, patient 
and chastened by many a trial, is dream- 
ing, too ; a brother or an uncle is in the 
gracious bark, and soon all cares of pov- 
erty will be over, and plenty and peace 
will illuminate their home. 

Dream on, ye children of the earth. 
The phantom ship does come into the 
harbor, and the spices, stuffs, and jewels 
are unladen, though not in the shape ye 
wist; the hope that has encouraged and 
sustained is the ship itself, and the fond 
imaginings that have cheated time of his 
wrinkles and given days and nights the 
wine of courage and gladness have done 
their perfect work. Who shall ever de- 
spair whilst that far-off ship glows a while 



Short Range. 47 

in the rays of the setting sun ? Nay, let 
us follow it to the last. Sweet odors come 
from distant lands, and this ghost-craft 
with moonbeam spars and spider-web can- 
vas is sailing straight on to the myrtles of 
Paradise. 



A CERTAIN proportion of mental 

narrowness, vigorous physique, and 

lively interest in mundane things makes 

a man who can be most usefully employed 

in a variety of affairs. 



A NAP is a graceful symphony; it is 
not an entire composition ; it is a 
novelette and not a novel ; it bears the 
same relation to sleep that sleep bears to 
a prolonged trance, that a kiss does to the 
sum total of a courtship ; its brevity and 
its happening whilst the sun illuminates 
a noisy world add to its sweetness ; to let 
this delicious bit of petty larceny per- 
petrated on old Father Time be vulgar- 
ized into a great exhausting and snoring 



48 At Long and 

slumber would be a rank transgression. 
Take your little nap, — if it is only for five 
minutes, — and be grateful that you are not 
a street-car mule or engaged in getting 
out an afternoon paper. You need not 
keep a carriage if you have time for this 
nap. You are reasonably rich and should 
be contented. 



HTHERE is a gentle nerve excitation 
(tremulousness) which is favorable to 
imaginative thought, delicate emotional 
writing, and such speaking to juries as 
involves any appeal to the feelings. 



QOETHE was called the "many-sided" 
and Shakespeare the "myriad- 
minded." If an angel were given the 
histories of the race, largely taken up 
with exploitation of deeds of carnage, he 
would say, "These are demons calling 
themselves by turns barbarous or civil- 
ized." If he were then given the records 
which the race has preserved of its phi- 



Short Range. 49 

losophy, science, art, and benevolence, he 
would say "These people are many-sided 
and myriad-minded." 



'T'HERE is an affair in which there is 
no sex, — the lonesome interim be- 
tween the putting away of a disillusioned 
toy and the finding of a new one. 



TT is not pleasant to one who meditates 
the pen to find that what he counted 
on as a well or spring turns out to be a 
cistern dependent on occasional rains. In 
time of drought — poor fellow ! — he feels 
like one whose draft is returned from 
bank marked "no funds." Still, he can 
compile, and it may prove more lucrative. 



CONSIDERING the age in which he 
wrote, the manners of his fellow- 
dramatists, who were also his personal 
friends, and the necessity for coarse and 
obscene allusions to conciliate the audi- 



50 At Long and 

ences of that day, Shakespeare's general 
delicacy, purity, and soaring elevation of 
art-essence and mode strike one now as 
monumentally separating him from all the 
forceful men of that prodigious era in 
British literature. 



I" DEFY any one to be " sentimental" in 
the crisp air of a fine winter morning. 



'"THE ingenious youth of our time does 
not need to order a new suit to make 
an impression ; he puts on a fresh scarf, 
and the deed is done. He can, by fre- 
quently changing this little article, foster 
the illusion of a very varied toilet, and if 
he have taste can express his individuality 
more decisively in his cravat than in all 
the rest of his habiliments. 



T^HERE are expressive words which 

are substantially meaningless to one 

until they are invested with meaning by 



Short Range. 51 

some special experience : such words as 
love, faith, poverty, friendlessness, re- 
morse, despair. 



C)NE clue to our fondness for nature, 
save its compelling beauty, is, that 
under the skies and amidst the hills and 
pastures and running waters there is the 
blessedness of conscious spirit repose, as 
sweet as the unconscious repose which 
slumber gives; nay, sweeter, since it is a 
gift in the broad light of day. 



HPHE planets have been named, but not 
being within "speaking distance," it 
is no intentional rudeness on the part of 
the multitudes, who only know them as 
glow-worms of the sky. 



ANY book which repeats our thought 
not only gives us a pleasing surprise, 
but wins our friendship at once. In com- 
plimenting such a book we adroitly com- 
5 



52 At Long and 

pliment ourselves, though we do not even 
so much as whisper to our inmost selves 
that part of the transaction. 



TT was not of the Parliament of Letters 
and Art that Sir Robert Walpole 
affirmed, "Every man has his price." The 
constraining desire which invades and 
takes possession of certain souls for some 
form, however slight, of creative and 
artistic achievement, does not have its 
genesis in any greed of pelf, place, or even 
renown. It is the passionate yearning to 

" Live a being more intense, . . . 
. . . Gaining as we give, the life we image." 



'"PHERE is a subtle pathos in the occa- 
sional effort of some very rich man 
to establish a social tie with the poor in 
purse but proud in spirit, by affecting some 
taste that will awaken a responsive chord. 
And there is a still deeper pathos when the 
man of millions, for his own sake, en- 



Short Range. 53 

deavors at times to escape the despotism 
of his dollars. 

Jay Gould had a surpassing fine collec- 
tion of orchids. 



HTHE rattlesnake has compelled the re- 
spect of man. There is nothing of 
the sneak about this snake. 



''PHIS old earth of ours does quake or 
erupt every now and then ; but come, 
now ! doesn't the old lady behave herself 
in the main with more discretion, as she 
takes her annual tour around the sun, than 
the bipeds she carries along with her ? 



'"THERE are habiliments suited to pros- 
perous men of business, judges, states- 
men, and clergymen, into which some 
member of the amusing fraternity — writers, 
artists, and the like — sometimes inconti- 
nently plunges, and struts around in a semi- 
shamefaced travesty of the air of respect- 



54 At Long and 

able opulence. Those of his own craft 
muse thoughtfully over this transmogrified 
being ; but he is transparent to the calm 
eye of the veteran hotel waiter, and when 
he puts aside his raiment he feels as if he 
had been journeying in strange lands and 
lost his own identity. Sea-captains are 
privileged to do such things on their wed- 
ding-day. 



CUPERABUNDANT animal health is 
such an "embarrassment of riches" 
that the possessor turns spendthrift forth- 
with. 



/ T*HE preachers have a way in their dis- 
courses of reassuring the mourners by 
contrasting the icy shroud of winter with 
the reawakened bloom of spring, the leaf- 
less trees putting on new foliage, etc. It 
is a misleading analogy. Girdle the tree 
and actually kill it, and it will not put forth 
foliage again. The conviction that we live 
again is not found in what we see in the 



Short Range. 55 

outer world. We find it in our own bosoms. 
We did not put it there, and we cannot 
destroy it if we would. 



"LJ OPE gives her little wings a flutter at 

daybreak ; but is it the pleasure of 

retrospect or the grateful relief at escape 

that makes the twilight hour so agreeable ? 



TV/TY friendly brier is prolific of idle 
fancies this 8 a.m., — e.g., would the 
Greeks who fought at Marathon have con- 
quered at Cheronea, the Persians of Cyrus 
have disquieted Alexander at Arbela, and 
the legions of the Caesar have made short 
work of the festive Hun ? 



TF one wishes to know how many Edens 
there are in this blessed land of politics 
and politicians, let him not go to the art 
galleries or the professed poets to find out, 
but rather equip himself with a score of 
dazzling railroad prose poems, and revel 
5* 



56 At Long and 

by the hour in visions of entrancing 
loveliness. Gould, Vanderbilt, Garrett, 
Huntington, and their confreres are the 
bards who sing the glories of the fair land 
stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
Who has not sighed for the perennial de- 
lights of Kansas, and longed to die in the 
Bayou Teche ? There was a time when 
Duiuth was a more musical name than 
Damascus, and the swamps of Arkansas 
have in their day rivalled the Vale of 
Shiraz. Why deplore the loss of that art 
of coloring which Titian carried away 
with him when he quit the world ? The 
railroad poets make words eclipse the hues 
of Titian and transform barren wastes into 
oases of beauty. The age of iron is the 
age of fancy. 



T£TT NORTH said, " The most delicious 
sensation in life is the first tug of a 
salmon." I beg leave to add that it has a 
rival in the first whir of a grouse, — our 
American "ruffed grouse" of the woods, 
miscalled pheasant. 



Short Range. 57 

HTHE tiniest drop of the sparkle of 
twenty would intoxicate like ether 
at fifty. 



"pXPLAIN it as one may, no one ever 
felt the tender home-like feeling for a 
dwelling-house without grounds and trees 
that he does for a house even if it have 
but a little grass-plot and a few rose-bushes 
and other shrubbery. Let the house be 
ever so grand, its apartments ever so com- 
fortable, it does not take abiding posses- 
sion of the heart like a home in a green- 
sward and sheltered by noble forest trees. 
The old well in a grassy yard contains 
more delightful associations than the most 
elegant drawing-room, and children re- 
member their romps in pastures and their 
swings under a paternal oak when they 
have forgotten all about big stairways and 
imposing parlors. / The love of nature is 
strong in us all. Man was originally a 
hunter, and the old instinct for the woods 
constantly breaks through the veneer of 
the civilization he has imposed upon him- 



58 At Long and 

self. If you wish your family to have a 
life-long memory of a dear and precious 
home, make an endeavor to have some 
pretty suburban spot, with verdure and a 
visible sky to haunt the fancy with sug- 
gestions of the beautiful. Mere bricks 
and mortar have no perennial claim upon 
the mind. A stately tree in front of home 
gives gracious welcome ere you reach the 
threshold, and it is a singularly pleasing 
sight to witness the blue smoke from the 
roof-top toying with the air. 



'"PHE solemn way in which certain clocks 
announce the hours would make even 
Lamb break off in the middle of a pun. 



HTHERE is no quality more relished and 
less adequately prized than humor. 
The compact sense that underlies it and 
interpenetrates it is not properly recog- 
nized. It was this fact which led Tom 
Corwin, of Ohio, a man of the rarest gifts, 
to warn young men against the exercise of 



Short Range. 59 

wit. He said people laughed at the clown 
and respected the ring-master. 



T7INE wit or humor is often covert sense 

masquerading as overt nonsense. It 

is a playful trick and a pretty effective one. 



/^\UR disappointments and desponden- 
cies over shattered ideals or melting 
illusions count for nothing with a surround- 
ing world preoccupied with its own affairs. 
How grateful to turn to a well-written 
novel and find that such phases of life are 
thought of enough interest to portray ! 
Many a time one finds a sympathetic echo 
in a novel ; rarely in a world which does 
its best or worst to make one fear that there 
are only two substantial things, — to wit, 
digestion and cash. 



TT is the fashion to consider the poet as 

one who expresses himself in rhyme or 

blank verse. If he be a poet he knows that 



60 At Long and 

these are fetters, and that he has never 
uttered that which is within him; only 
stammered in impeding verse. 



TF the person who takes the part of king 
on the stage suffers a sense of humili- 
ating transition when his royal robes are 
laid aside and he is compelled to higgle 
with his landlady and supplicate with his 
washerwoman, what must be the feeling of 
the drum-major of a brass band when he 
hangs up his enormous fur shako, hides 
away his baton, and melts into the ranks 
of private life ? He who has been accus- 
tomed to march at the head of resounding 
music, with the plaudits of a host of chil- 
dren and the gaping admiration of a pro- 
miscuous throng, must find it hard to be. 
shorn of his dimensions and sink into the 
commonplace. He will always be the 
most wondrous being on earth to his own 
family. No wife or little ones could ever 
be indifferent to the drum-major when he 
sallies forth in all the pomp and panoply 
of his profession, and the youngest of his 



Short Range. 61 

flock deem him a veritable ruler of the 
universe. How much show can be effected 
by a huge hat, a great staff, and some glit- 
tering tinsel ! There is a large family of 
drum-majors who do not march at the 
head of brass bands; their consequence 
has as little to support it, and impartial 
time at last discloses them even to them- 
selves, the most cruel stroke of all. 



"JV/T ANY a poor little ugly dog has secured 
life-long food, shelter, and care by 
simply wagging his tail and giving a quick, 
glad bark when his master comes. A good 
deal could be said about this, but we for- 
bear. 



TT sometimes happens, in a city, that a 
man, by proffering a dollar, or at most 
three half-dollars, at a ticket-office, can 
enter a building and have a number of 
people, who have devoted years to ac- 
quiring the art, amuse and entertain him 
for a whole evening. Happy dog, not to 



62 At I :■ s 

have reached the stage when he cannot be 
amused even by an outlay of one dollar 
and a half! 



TF one will think for a moment of the 
fond participial adjectives ending in 
"ing" that have been applied to little 
brooks, he will perceive how much more 
pleasure they have given than lakes., rivers. 
or the mighty sea. 



'"PHE busy days, one by one, superimpose 
their colors on the old precious can- 
vas ', but a few chords of the music of 
Prospero's island will cause these colors to 
melt away, and lo ! there are the virginal 
pictures and the lark still soaring at 
heaven's srate. 



TF it be even partly true that conversa- 
tion is one of the "lost arts," cards 
will flourish with rank luxuriance. Ken- 
nan, in his dismal stories about Russia, 



Short Range. 63 

states that card-playing is nearly universal 
in that despotic land, because it is dan- 
gerous to talk : spies are everywhere. 



COME one, whose name we have for- 
gotten, defined fame as "postponed 
oblivion." 



"M"0, my good German friend in English 
dress, we cannot 

" Clothe the palpable and the familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn." 

We consciously, and without narcotics, 
provide for so many hours of obli/ion 
(sleep), and have achieved the feat so 
often that it has lost its impressiveness. 
There may be a "nine days' wonder," 
but it will be desperately stale at the close. 



TT is the contour and grand repose of the 
mountain, the movement and color of 
the sea. And yet, when we have said this, 
6 



64 At Long and 

how much we seem to have left unsaid ! 
The unexpressed part fills volumes in the 
mind and heart, — an unpublished library. 



'"PHE emphasis with which Christ referred 
to little children in relation to the 
kingdom of heaven implies not only a 
state of being in which there is no con- 
scious sinfulness, but also a state in which 
there is no deliberated thought. 

In this aspect, thinking may be regarded 
as one of the necessary pangs of earth and 
penalties of hell. 

Was it Schopenhauer who said, " Con- 
sciousness is the malady of human nature' ' ? 



TT is not the love of money that is the 
root of all evil. It is the love of self. 



A FEW years ago the newspapers and 

several magazines were discussing 

the query, " Is marriage a failure ?' ' Since 

then there have been divers crashes, col- 



Short Range. 65 

lapses, in mercantile, banking, railroad, 
and manufacturing enterprises. It is now 
about time to introduce the sapient in- 
quiry, "Is business a failure?" 



TF the furred and feathered denizens of 
some sylvan retreat could know the 
portent of the first resounding axe in 
those solitary haunts, their hearts would 
answer in beats like funeral drums. 



'TWO words have become obnoxious for 
what they represent, or are supposed 

to represent, to classes not at all affiliated. 
The words are " Society," " Fashion." 
The classes may be numbered, — 

1. Christians of a Puritanicil or Quaker 
type. 

2. The masses of working-people. 

3. Contemplative, scholarly people. 

4. Ignorant, brutal people. 

The attitude of feeling in which each class 
stands to the things for which the words 
specified stand may be put under their 



66 At Long and 

respective numbers as above tabulated, 
thus : 

i. Morbid distrust of worldly gayety. 

2. Sharp and unwelcome sense of con- 
trast with modicum of envy. 

3. Distaste for social gregariousness and 
for forms and fripperies. 

4. Natural hatred for anything elegant 
and comely. 



TTHE old " back log" still stoutly holds 
its own, amidst all the mutations in 
stone. It antedated Homer, and may sur- 
vive him. 



A POT of flowers, some homely work in 
worsted, wax, or shells, and thereby 
hangs a tale. The appealing eye of dumb 
animals that have no gift of articulate 
speech ofttimes arrests the thoughtful mind. 
Let us take passing and gentle heed to 
these men and women about us who have 
no craft of pen, pencil, brush, chisel, or 
lyre ; hardly a voice, indeed ; only some- 



Short Range. 67 

what weary hands and feet, and hearts 
piteously weary at intervals because they 
have no voice. 



T^HE express-messenger at Christmas- 
time loses his official look and wears 
a half-bashful and pleased expression. 



HTHE charm of the night is in the release, 
partial or total, from the inquisition 
and attrition of the day. 

It is a soft fancy that there may yet be 
days of light which never wound like the 
teeth of a saw, or fret like a swarm of in- 
sects. "We are such stuff as dreams are 
made of," — and this also maybe a dream. 



I7VEN Dean Swift never said so cruel 
a thing of his kind as the ancient 
Roman who said, "Homo est, per quod 
stomachum est," — i.e., a man is what he is 
through his stomach. Is the world a huge 
hash-house ? 

6* 



68 At Long and 

HTHAT pendulum of the ludicrous, the 
owl, is quite as comical as the 
monkey. 



"V^OUTH and age are as far apart as 

" Flora and the country green, 
Dance and Provencal mirth," 

from the bleakest polar region, and yet 
along the telegraphic wire of love they 
may and do exchange messages that are 
understood. 



'"THE desperado, the malcontent, who 
fancies after reading the daily jour- 
nal that he is no worse than the rest of 
the world, that he is simply in the fashion, 
makes a foolish mistake. The world is 
earning its bread by the sweat of its brow, 
and the criminal who interferes with it is 
doing a more grievous wrong than even 
his own wicked heart contemplates. Every 
cog in the great wheel that he puts out of 
order for a single second injures thousands 



Short Range. 69 

of human beings. He must not complain 
if outraged society avenges and protects 
itself. It must do so. False sentiment 
may whine as it will, but the honest effort 
of men and women cannot be interrupted 
even by the angels, much less by depraved 
men. 



'"THE freemasonry of the angle is not 
so robust as that of the gun, but it 
is a trifle more engaging. 



'"THE only thing possible for persons 
constitutionally out of tune with the 
people and scenes amidst which they have 
their being is to cultivate, so far as it can 
be done, a partially sympathetic spirit with 
the thoughts and activities of others, and 
extract from those silent sessions which 
Shakespeare had consulted such balm as 
they can afford. The solitary men need 
neither affirm nor deny the superior wis- 
dom of the majority. All they need do is 
to recognize their own constitutional es- 



70 At Long and 

trangement and make it as little offensive 
to others and as little a source of discomfort 
to themselves as good sense, good breed- 
ing, and temperate philosophy will permit. 



"\7U r RITERS sometimes deplore the short 
tenure of life which even capitally 
good books have. But where is the me- 
morial of all the wit, wisdom, and witchery 
which lawyers of high genius have dis- 
played in a thousand court-rooms ? 



HTHE discriminating use of adjectives im- 
parts a distinctive and fine quality 
alike to colloquial speech and set writing. 
The better poets are notably fastidious 
in this behalf, and may be most profitably 
consulted by students of style, — e.g., in 
Campbell's " The Soldier's Dream,"— 

" And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky." 

In common conversational exchanges, 
the repeated employment of a few stereo- 
typed adjectives would imply great poverty 



Short Range. 71 

and feebleness of taste. This would be a 
hasty and often unjust judgment. This 
little stock of well-worn and hard-worked 
adjectives is kept on hand for instant con- 
venience in the sudden and rapid inter- 
changes of passing intercourse, where aca- 
demic precision is not exacted or expected. 
Persons of good ability and abundant re- 
sources on occasion have this small change 
to throw away in the general comedy of 
small talk. It is a Bohemian protest against 
everlasting critical exactitude. 



"\17"E hear of misanthropy, but who of 
us is personally acquainted with a 
genuine out-and-out misanthrope ? 



AS the physical world and every atom 
of it is in a perpetual whirl, Nature 
imposes the desire and necessity iox physi- 
cal movement upon her human children, 
else why the skipping-rope, riding, walk- 
ing and skating, athletic games, dancing, 
pleasure of the chase, etc. ? If the mind 



72 At Long and 

rebels against a dead calm, so does the 
body. 



'T'HE barking dog seems to harmonize, 
if the expression may be allowed, 
with the hills and pastures of the country ; 
he provokes wrath among the denizens of 
the city. 



''THE feminine passion for dress and per- 
sonal adornment is the theme of 
many who find, or think they find, coun- 
tenance in rare Ben Jonson's celebrated 
verse : 

" Give me a look, give me a face 
That makes simplicity a grace ; 
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free, 
Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
Than all the adulteries of art 
That strike mine eyes but not mine heart." 

Ah ! Benjamin, bricklayer, soldier, and 
poet, the sweet neglect which captivated 
your fancy was the perfection of the art 
which conceals art; there was not a de- 



Short Range. 73 

tail of the seeming freedom of mien and 
drapery which the nymph who inflamed 
your muse had not with subtle prevision 
and unerring witchcraft of taste perpended 
and arranged for conquest. The care 
which the gentler sex bestows upon ex- 
ternals can no more be successfully im- 
peached than that innate aspiration for the 
beautiful which expresses itself in a thou- 
sand attractive forms, in bronze and mar- 
ble and wood-work, upon canvas, in the 
symphonies of the musician, and in the 
melodious syllables of the poet. It is a 
feeling which pervades all classes, which 
puts the pot of flowers upon the window- 
sill of the humblest home, as well as the 
engravings and paintings and plaques 
upon the walls of palaces. Take this 
hunger and thirst for beauty of outline, 
charm of color, and melody of sound out 
of the human soul, and all its ideals would 
perish and the dream of Paradise fade 
into darkness forever. It is not an acci- 
dent that the sex which illustrates in its 
own distinctive grace and loveliness of 
form, feature, and motion the living idea 



74 At Long and 

of human beauty, so that the glory of the 
physical universe shall not make us all 
pantheists, should, in its wise attention to 
all exterior aids, preserve the refinements 
of civilization and save men from relapsing 
into semi-barbarism. 



'"THE modern man is not easily discon- 
certed. He still wears the stove- 
pipe hat. 



'"THE peculiar claims of the Old Testa- 
ment as a book of religion have 
overshadowed its exceptional value as a 
narrative of early ages and peoples. It is 
so interpenetrated with the theocratic 
idea that it does not permit us to read it 
as we would Herodotus or Livy. 



TT sometimes happens, in amusing mood, 

that one wonders whether uncles and 

aunts are not in the habit of doing more 

kind things, with less animated recogni- 



Short Range. 75 

tion thereof, than any other kin, mothers 
excepted. 



"P\0 those folk who assail Sir Walter 
Scott, because he delivered no " Mes- 
sage," get into a controversy with a cool- 
ing draught from a mountain spring or with 
the tonic breeze that has journeyed over 
the ocean, or with all things that simply 
cheer, refresh, and exhilarate? Old Dr. 
Sam. J. and T. Carlyle, Esq., did not pre- 
empt the whole fair earth. 



HTHE horn of the hunter is heard in the 
hills, and really as well as allitera- 
tively, hut the guitar of the balcony and 
the banjo of the lowly hut have found 
their way into the drawing-room. 



''THERE are a good many elaborate 

articles published nowadays on 

house architecture, and a few notable 

magazine articles have been wholly taken 

7 



76 At Long and 

up with the exterior of houses. Grant- 
ing all that is so well said about doors 
and windows and projecting cornices 
and chimneys, and all that is said about 
the interior decorations of houses by an- 
other class of writers, we believe that 
most men find their chief comfort in a 
cosey snuggery answering the purpose of 
a library and smoking-room, and in some 
retired porch where in warm weather they 
can take their ease. The richly-furnished 
parlor is the last place the average man 
looks for enjoyment, and he never victim- 
izes his bosom friends by installing them 
in that apartment. He is willing to con- 
cede all that is claimed for wall-paper, 
and frescos, and curtains, and china, 
and antique furniture, and pictures, and 
other odds and ends bearing the seal of 
fashion, but when he seeks pleasure he 
retreats to his own den. There are doubt- 
less a few choice engravings there; they 
are for delight, and not for show. There 
may possibly be a good breech-loader in 
the corner and a jointed rod suspended 
on the wall, and pipes and slippers and 



■.-'„■ 



Short Range. 77 

hunting-jacket and dog-collar and fine old 
books that have a companionable look, 
and, in short, there is an atmosphere about 
the room that warns off pedants and 
prudes. This is a place which asks noth- 
ing of architects and sesthetes. It does 
not even crave any admiration from the 
delicate perceptions of the gentler sex. 
The awful genius of inexorable order 
does not preside here, and the maid with 
the broom stays no longer in it than she 
would in a haunted chamber. It is, how- 
ever, a retreat in which one can relish 
Shakespeare and Milton and Lamb, Kit 
North and Frank Forrester and Emerson, 
and the Turf Register can here keep com- 
pany without violating the fitness of things. 
The curly head who invades this free 
realm cracks his walnuts on the hearth 
without fear of Nemesis, and this is 
one spot where a man can receive his 
cronies without sprucing up or any for- 
mality of manner or speech. The fancy 
gentlemen who write for the magazines 
would tell us how this delightful den, too, 
should be built and furnished, but they 



78 At Long and 

may spare their pains ; they may stay out- 
side the house and dictate the front, or 
they may arrange drawing-room, hall, bed- 
rooms, dining-room, but there is a spot 
which is determined to be as natural and 
unconventional as Downing wishes land- 
scapes to be, and the master of it don't 
intend to have any Prussian martinetism 
show its presence there; that charming 
Bohemia of the house, welcome to dogs 
and men if they be of the right strain 
and breeding, will hold its own free ways 
so long as man has any sense and gentle 
woman is wise enough to humor what she 
may deem the amiable vestiges of sav- 
agery. Give the good fellow this liberty 
hall and a cosey back porch, and let the 
upholsterers take the rest and be hanged 
to them. 



(~*OLERIDGE during the closing ten 
years of his life at Dr. Gillman's did 
little else but talk. Lymphatic persons, 
even when endowed with imagination, 
seem to dislike the drudgery of the pen. 



Short Range. 79 

T^HERE are people who travel many 
furlongs of country, on the plea of 
business, health, or recreation, who do 
not show any willingness to confess even 
to themselves that they are in quest of a 
sympathetic listener. 



'"PHE writer not long since stood on a 
gentle eminence at Marietta, Geor- 
gia, from which could be seen near at 
hand Stone Mountain, Pine Mountain, 
Sweet Mountain, and the historic Kene- 
saw, charged by Wood's division of Sher- 
man's army. The Confederate General 
Cleburne said it was the most brilliant 
charge he had ever witnessed. Ah ! there 
is a memorial of it and of Resaca in the 
eleven thousand bodies reposing in that 
Marietta cemetery. The marble head- 
stones bear the names of those who are 
known. There are Swedish names among 
the dead men hailing from Wisconsin. 
They came from abroad to till the North- 
west, and here they sleep in this Southern 
valley, the flag of the republic for which 



80 At Long and 

they fought streaming above them. This 
cemetery was established in 1S66. The 
gate-way is of Stone Mountain granite, 
and cost ten thousand dollars. The 
names on the marble tablets were graven 
by the new sand-blast process. A hand- 
some avenue runs to this honored burial- 
ground, and the spot itself is kept in 
perfect order. Johnston held the interior 
lines here. Now the Union dead hold 
them, whilst the small cotton planter of 
Bibb County drives his cart in to sell to 
the local broker. It is a lovely region, 
and Sherman's men were enthusiastic when 
they camped in its fine oak-groves. Mari- 
etta has about two thousand five hundred 
people, and is about twenty miles distant 
from Atlanta. It was a sanatorium before 
the war, and is still so, the low-country peo- 
ple corning there in summer and Northern 
invalids in winter. There are many pretty 
cottages and yards ; the air is very pure 
and the freestone water cool and pleasant. 
The one feature here, however, which in- 
terests the casual tourist is the congrega- 
tion of dead soldiers on yonder gentle 



Short Range. 81 

hill, and as the writer paused before a 
stone bearing the name of a Pennsylva- 
nian, he thought of a gallant soul from 
Alleghany County who fell at Chancellors- 
ville, and whose resting-place, if marked 
at all, bears the forlorn inscription " Un- 
known." In all that charming landscape 
this army of motionless men who came 
down there in the uniform of the nation 
still rules the heart with a potent sceptre 
and affects one with thoughts "that lie 
too deep for tears." 



TF lions and tigers only had a literature, 
how many "Eddas" and "Sagas" we 
might have, rivalling in ferocious hilarity 
the songs and tales of the old Norsemen ! 



'"THE modern mind can more readily 
sympathize with certain vague but 
imposing trance chimeras of the Arhats of 
India than with the mediaeval depictions 
of Dante or Milton, for all the nervous 
imagery wherewith they are attired. 



82 At Long and 

A VIGOROUS scold in literature is as 
sure of attention as the enter- 
prising small boy who pokes up a hor- 
net's nest. 



'"PHERE are two types of men who fur- 
nish a curious and somewhat amusing 
contrast. The one always has handy the 
things that he is apt to need on occasion. 
He is sure to have a pocket-knife, a port- 
able little comb, postage-stamps, even a 
postal-card. He carries small change for 
convenience. Sometimes he carries a 
pocket-flask, but he doesn't abuse it. He 
is never without an umbrella in falling 
weather. He will have overshoes when 
the slush is ankle deep. This man can 
produce a lead-pencil if it is wanted, per- 
haps a stylographic pen. He is apt to 
have a blank memorandum-book for casual 
notes. He may be relied on for a lucifer- 
match in extremity, and his tobacco-pouch 
is not empty if he is a smoker. If he is 
travelling, he is fully posted as to all the 
connections. His berth in the sleeper is 



Short Range. 83 

sure to be well located, and his gripsack 
may be counted on for a luncheon if that 
is exigent. Such a man is ever equipped. 
His mind is full of precision, and he is 
never taken unawares. In time of fire 
he would never throw a looking-glass out 
of the window and try to lug a stove into 
the street. In a shipwreck he would be 
sure to have a shutter to float on. If he 
is engaged to be married he will not disap- 
point the bride expectant, and he will 
promptly meet his paper in bank. He 
never scatters his clothes around the room 
on retiring at night, and we advise the 
enterprising burglar that an individual of 
this stamp will be certain to have a re- 
volver when needed. He never lets his 
watch run down, and he shaves as regularly 
as the planets pursue their journeys in the 
sky. He is a man of precision, definite- 
ness of purpose, and unswerving method. 
He is never confused as to dates, and he 
never blots the paper he writes on. He 
never gives any one the wrong address, and 
he never fails through absence of mind 
to recognize an acquaintance. No living 



84 At Long and 

stable-keeper can put a runaway horse on 
him, and when he comes to die, his affairs 
will be found tabulated, and his death-bed 
directions will be as precise as if he were 
ordering a breakfast at a restaurant, — 
speaking of which, he is the very man who 
knows what to order at an eating-house, 
and his diet is as choice as his toilet. 

The other man is the opposite in every- 
thing and in all things. He bores people 
begging for a knife, a match, a postage- 
stamp, a comb, — for all manner of simple 
articles of use. He is a helpless and 
troublesome creature who needs a nurse to 
watch over him. He never has anything 
at the right time, nor does anything at the 
right time. He can't look ahead of his 
nose, and no embarrassments ever teach 
him anything. All the money you could 
give him would evaporate, and his mind is 
mere mush without any consistency. If 
he should marry a woman of will, she 
would treat him with affectionate contempt, 
and his children would wink at each other 
whenever he enunciated any proposition or 
plan. He is sure to get out of all troubles, 



ij)r«JHi 



Short Range. 85 

to be taken care of by somebody, and to 
experience as much happiness as the average 
pet white rabbit in a warren. The benev- 
olent little goblins watch over this man. 
He gets the knife, match, postage-stamp, 
or comb. He is always mildly foraging, 
and always tolerated with more or less 
patience ; but tolerated all the same. As 
a grown-up infant, he invites and receives 
friendly solicitude. 



^\NE who keeps on good terms with 
hopelessly commonplace people, and 
disguises all signs of fatigue, need not 
despair of attaining a few of the Christian 
graces, if so inclined. 



YyHATEVER ma y betide, men have 
good cause to rejoice that they bear 
no part in that crowning bore of all bores 
known as the "formal call." That is a 
feminine institution. It is the invention 
of the sex, and the sex groans under its 
yoke. Man smokes his Durham in beatific 



86 At Long and 

peace, whilst the wife and daughters pay 
tribute to the formal call. He hears the 
sotto voce prayer that parties will be out and 
that the matter can be despatched with a 
card. He quietly notes the sigh of relief 
when the exhausted women return after 
hours of social distress. He observes the 
tax of dress incident to the affair, the bad 
temper it invokes, and the hypocrisy and 
the total absence of any equivalent in the 
way of pleasure for all this slavish ad- 
herence to custom, and then dimly realizes 
the miraculous felicity of his own escape 
from such thraldom, and it may be takes 
comfort in the thought that the whole 
business falls totally on those who have 
made him pay the piper for countless other 
freaks and whims of fashion and caprice. 
The elasticity of conscience with which the 
gentle creatures endeavor to mitigate the 
infliction of the formal call by convenient 
fibs furnishes the masculine monster some 
amusing food for study, and it may be 
doubted whether he would budge an inch 
to abolish the formal call. It is diamond 
cut diamond ; women annoying women. 



■■■■Ml 



Short Range. 87 

In such a transaction the wise man holds 
aloof and lets the dainty belligerents mas- 
querading as friends manage the hollow 
and artificial show as suits themselves. It 
is not often that he has an opportunity of 
keeping out of a game in which women 
array their wits against one another in- 
stead of against the common tyrant, man. 
He is at liberty to be judiciously silent and 
hear the fair prattlers discuss each other in 
a style utterly unlike the fancy pictures of 
novelists and poets, and if he doesn't get 
some wholesome enlightenment he is hope- 
lessly stupid. The formal call is an eye- 
opener. In its inception, progress, and 
sequel it illuminates the dull brain of man 
as to the infinite variety, versatility, and 
elasticity of that delightful compound of 
puffs, powder, and passion known as 
woman. 



A NY persevering lament over the death 
of the very young or very old implies 
more praise of the felicities of this life than 
the facts warrant. 



88 At Long and 

T HARDLY know why I am puzzled in 
remembering that Emerson married 
twice and left a moderately good estate. 



pURNISHING a drawing-room to order, 
so to speak, is like making a library 
from a publisher's catalogue. Take your 
time, and get only those paintings, plaques, 
bronzes, engravings, statuettes, books, and 
articles of vertu which fairly satisfy your 
deliberate taste and truly please the inner 
sense of the sterling and the beautiful, and 
you will make a room that will deservedly 
be gratifying to a disciplined vision. It 
is not merely in the shops where art things 
are sold that you can accumulate your 
munitions; you must learn where the 
skilled craftsmen do their work, and culti- 
vate the faculty of recognizing admirable 
creations. Paintings cannot be bought by 
the yard, or ornamental articles by mere 
shop values. There are many conscien- 
tious artists in this country who have little 
wide-spread distinction, who are doing 
work that will stand the most critical 



Short Range. 89 

tests. . You should hunt these men up in 
their workshops and secure their treasures 
at first hand. 



T KNOW very little of mechanics, but 
there is a class of masons I sometimes 
think about with an interest that is not 
wholly languid. I mean the coral-reef 
builders. 



TZPVEN those whose judgment is tempo- 
rarily affected by a tumult of sound 
reconsider in moments of calm. The 
loud-mouthed dogmatist and vocal bully 
may talk down reason for a while, but 
can never slay it. The operations of the 
mind itself are in secret and in silence, 
and when all the fuss and fury of sound 
are over, whether of drums, cannon, or 
throats, the truths that have been ascer- 
tained by patient thought will vindicate 
their immortal vitality and compel men 
and mobs to be still and listen. Let no 
one resign an iota of intellectual freedom 



90 At Long and 

on account of any clamor. The stars 
shine calm and eternal amidst all the 
contention of warring winds, and what- 
ever is inherently true and right will shine 
in the spiritual firmament when untold 
multitudes of noise-making mortals have 
passed to rest. The conviction of this 
fact is the inspiration of all ages. 



"\XTE have seen winter landscapes of daz- 
zling magnificence, to which poor 
man has humbly brought his little contri- 
bution : smoke from a cabin chimney, an 
old stone barn, or something of that sort. 



"DIRDS afford an interesting study for any 
one having leisure and inclination to 
indulge it. Take the domestic pigeon. 
This pretty bird seems to be as natural a 
companion of men and women as are dogs 
and cats, and yet it is not petted. It perches 
on the roof-tops ; it picks its food in the 
streets of crowded cities with fearless con- 



Short Range. 91 

fidence that it will not be disturbed ; it is 
found in haunts of civilization and avoids 
woods. In Dutch pictures the pigeon is 
nearly always employed to emphasize the 
idea of home. The bird is associated with 
pastoral scenes and with peace ; never with 
war, like the eagle. The rich colors of its 
neck and wings, the graceful poise of its 
head, its indolent and happy habits, are 
familiar everywhere, and it is rarely mo- 
lested even by those energetic guerillas, 
the boys, who attack everything not under 
the protection of the laws. The ' ' squabs, ' ' 
or young pigeons, are a favorite article of 
food, but the pigeon is not preserved for 
edible purposes. It is recognized as an 
adjunct to houses, fields, and streets, and, 
without being caressed like a pet cat, dog, 
or squirrel, is affectionately tolerated as a 
pleasing feature of civilized life. What 
market town is there which does not have 
its groups of beautifully-colored pigeons 
picking after the passing wain, and what 
old country farm-house around whose 
chimneys the pigeons do not swoop with 
lazy flight before they settle securely and 
8* 



92 At Long and 

tranquilly upon the eaves ? There might 
as well be no blue smoke floating through 
the trees of a rural home as no flock of 
pigeons descending in the near barn-yard. 
There, too, are the martin and the swal- 
low. They have old prerogatives, and 
sunset in the country without the swallow 
describing its fine curves in the enchanted 
air would be no sunset at all. Whoso 
sits upon some ancestral porch and looks 
over the valleys to distant hills regards 
with satisfied vision the swift -winged swal- 
lows as they rejoice in the pure serene, 
giving life to a landscape bathed with the 
hues of dying day. The bluebird and the 
robin are indissolubly associated with 
spring, the woodpecker breaks in upon the 
stillness of summer forests, and the cardi- 
nal grosbeak, with its red plumage, gives 
color to the white splendor of winter. 
The birds mark the seasons and connect 
themselves with fruitful associations. A 
distinct picture instantly emerges with the 
names of the snipe, quail, ruffed grouse, 
woodcock, mallard duck, plover, wild- 
goose, sand-hill crane, curlew, wild-turkey, 



Short Range. 93 

and sage-hen. All scenes of hill, stubble- 
field, forest, swamp, lake, river, ocean, 
thicket, and marsh, and all seasons from 
January to December, roll along in pano- 
ramic succession as the simple words are 
announced, and the sportsman in fancy 
charges his fowling-piece with shot ranging 
from the size of a two-grain quinine pill to 
mustard-seed, and cries out ''Steady !" to 
his spotted setters in the ragweed, or with 
gun in hand watches intently whilst his boat 
is poled through wild-rice marshes and tor- 
tuous bayous, or shoots across some open 
sheet of water where 

"The ducks' black squadron 
Anchored lay." 

Such is the potency of names, and such 
the responsiveness of the kindled imagina- 
tion. Those who have watched the fish- 
hawk secure his shining prey, and then 
noted the old feudal robber, the bald eagle, 
swooping down to dispute the prize, have 
added a fresh delight to their memory of 
birds. The mocking-bird defending its 
nest, and the mother quail imitating the 



94 At Long and 

actions of a crippled bird to allure the 
hunter away from its young, are interesting 
studies, and the cowardly flight of the 
crow from some small bird that pursues it, 
striking at the eye, is abundantly suggestive. 
Speaking of the crow, that ancient free- 
booter deserves a special recital, but space 
forbids. It takes a fifteen-year-old boy 
with his first single-barrelled shot-gun to do 
justice to the crow and his vigilant habits. 
The boy experiences many a prime emo- 
tion of disgust before he succeeds in bag- 
ging one of the black villains, but a boy 
is as patient as Mazeppa, and the crow 
stands in need of all his craft and circum- 
spection. A boy creeping for half a mile 
along a cornfield fence to shoot a crow 
perched on a stake is a refreshing sight. 
The crow enjoys the business. He lets his 
adversary come within a hundred yards' 
range, and then, with a " caw ! caw !" after 
the manner of a stage Mephistopheles, he 
takes himself slowly off. It is then that 
the young American rustic — future Presi- 
dent, perhaps — practises his first lesson in 
profanity. 



Short Range. 95 

gURKE, Coleridge, and De Quincey 
excite a faint suspicion at times that 
fecundity can annoy as well as sterility. 



/^HEERY and high-spirited old men who 
rejoice in life and stimulate to en- 
terprise are fine company; they temper 
your quick spirit with wise restraints, but 
do not chill your generous flame. These 
men have lived to purpose and can be of 
service; but the musty, fusty, rusty old 
cynics who can only doubt or cavil or 
sneer are no fit associates for one just en- 
tering upon the stage of action. Better a 
thousand times be with the turbulent of 
your own age, who at least have desires, 
beliefs, hopes, and some kindling ardor 
that can be turned to good as well as to 
mischief. There are old men who set up 
for philosophers and often impose their 
pretentious wisdom upon the credulous 
young. Their philosophy consists in du- 
bious shaking of the head when any enter- 
prise is broached, imbecile carping at any 
eloquent aspiration, sneers at humanitarian 



g6 At Long and 

ideas and impulses, and an implied assump- 
tion that everything is tinctured with sham, 
and that the sensible man is the one who 
keeps aloof from the stirring drama of life 
and passes comments on it as he would a 
show. What profit are such old moss- 
backs to anybody? They would make a 
young man suspicious of the affection of 
his own grandmother. Give these veteran 
fungi a wide berth. 



TVTO door is quite ready yet to admit that 
august visitor, Truth ; but a third or 
fourth cousin of the goddess will be pas- 
sably welcome. 



TT may fairly be claimed for this century 
that in decorum and outward observ- 
ance of morals and the social proprieties 
it is vastly ahead of the centuries which 
immediately preceded it. No potentate 
in any country pretending to be civilized 
could openly carry on the disgusting 
amours in which George I. and George 



j-r:- 



Short Range. 97 

II. of England indulged without provoking 
a revolution, and it is impossible to con- 
ceive in this day of such letters as the 
second George wrote from Hanover to 
his wife, complaining of the infidelity of 
his mistress, Walmoden. 



" pAITH CURE" for physical disorders 
is impotent, but mind cure for mind 
ailments is not. The mind can be both 
patient and physician. 



AH! if at Easter-time there could be a 
resurrection of youth for those who 
sigh with Wordsworth that the things 
which they have seen they now can see 
no more. All things are possible to youth. 
There joy and faith and hope hold court. 
Not alone the laughing eye, the red lip, and 
the step of an antelope are craved again, 
but the swift motion of the spirit, the re- 
joicing sense of ardor and aspiration, the 
welcome which the soul yet untamed and 
unsaddened gives to delight in all its 



98 At Long and 

shapes. Could youth reappear, how bright 
and beautiful the teeming and wonderful 
universe would be again ! Apollo would 
illuminate all things with immortal splen- 
dor, and the sweet pipings of Pan would 
rebuke the roar of locomotives and facto- 
ries. May it not be that in the hereafter 
there is that delicious possibility of the 
soul escaping from its heavy memories and 
distempered dreams, like a swift-winged 
bird, into a boundless realm of dewy light ? 
Why not this resurrection for the decrepit 
and half-revengeful spirit of man, weary 
beyond all forms of utterance of the 
slights that have been put upon it and the 
habiliments of care which it has been 
forced to endure? Surely it must be so. 
The physical world wakes again like a 
happy child from sleep. There is a 
charmed perfume in the moist woods, the 
wine of color suffuses the stems of shrubs, 
the clouds begin to erect fairy pavilions, 
and the faithful song of sea-going waters 
resounds like silver bells in scarp and 
counterscarp of mountain citadels. The 
world — the ever lovely, the ever loving — is 



Short Range. 99 

young again. Be of fond cheer, ye jaded 
mortals. For thee, too, there is youth 
again when the spectres of custom and sin 
are gone and the released soul breaks its 
cruel prison-bars. 



"\AfHEN a scientific writer relaxes into a 
little touch of poetic imagery, the 
effect is as winning as the smile of Napoleon 
is reported to have been. 



A/TARRIED people who sustain a polite 
relation without any affection on 
either side do not quarrel, whilst those 
who have the most fervent regard for each 
other often indulge in the most exaggerated 
outbreaks of passion, and accuse each other 
of manifold shortcomings. The polite 
people to whom reference has been made 
take a cool measure of each other's faults 
and graces, but with frigid and prudential 
philosophy restrain any expression, and 
pass muster as the happiest folks in the 
world, although their relation is simply 
9 



ioo At Long and 

one of convenience and a mere matter of 
tolerance on both sides. The demon- 
strative couples who so often come within 
an ace of separation by virtue of their 
honest but passing ebullitions frequently 
resolve to subdue their intercourse to a 
sober and business-like standard, in imita- 
tion of their philosophic neighbors; but 
nature usually proves too strong for this 
decorous programme, and they go on 
loving and occasionally squabbling to the 
end, saying hard things and unsaying 
them, and deploring the fact that they are 
sensitive to each other's opinions and ab- 
solutely dependent on each other for any 
genuine happiness. 



T^NNUI is as inevitable as death. Even 
Daniel Boone must have succumbed 
to it when deer and bear were scarce. 



HTO one casually sojourning by some bay 

or estuary of the sea the changeful 

and lovely aspects of water and sky, the 



Short Range. ioi 

picturesque colors of the coast-line where 
there are marsh meadows, and the bewitch- 
ing apparition of sail-boats, schooners, 
and other craft afford a delight unique 
in quality and one that does not soon 
fatigue. It may be doubted whether there 
is anything in mountain scenery or in 
billowy plains of grass dotted with clumps 
of trees and browsing herds that gives so 
constant and deep a satisfaction as these 
ever-varying and ever-beautiful sea-views. 
The water never presents the same coun- 
tenance. Its hues are ever blending into 
new and delicious combinations of light 
and shade, and then there is a freshness 
and life-suggesting property about it that 
quickens the spirit and animates the most 
jaded senses. To gaze upon the great 
living sea, to feel its swift inspiring winds, 
to watch the gulls and fish-eagles disport 
and the huge porpoise gambol, to see 
snowy sails stand against the horizon or 
at even-tide come stealing along the shores 
like spectres of the deep, to watch the 
waters glow beneath the full moon or 
gleam like Damascene armor when the 



102 At Long and 

sun bursts upon the coast, — these are joys 
that poets and painters love to speak of, 
and that the plain, untutored fisherman 
feels, although he has no voice to tell his 
thoughts. What music there is by the 
sea ! The creaking of the cordage as sails 
are raised and lowered at the docks, the 
splash of the tide against the wharves, the 
dip of oars, the shrill cry of passing 
plover, the commotion of a sudden shark, 
the cadence of salt airs that beat upon 
the land, songs of boatmen, and number- 
less other sounds that belong nowhere else, 
that harmonize with the waves and sky 
and land, and enter into one's mind and 
make images there forever. Who that 
has ever left the sea and gone inland 
does not repine to see again the red- 
shirted sailors cheerily at work, and the 
fisherman casting his net upon the blue 
waters ; to see again the breakers come 
in like Murat's cavalry upon a charge ; to 
see the magical interfusion of colors upon 
the tranquil expanse, or witness it grand 
and turbulent, when the bassoon of thun- 
der sounds, and the little boats hasten 



Short Range. 103 

into port ? To wander by the sea. What 
health, what satisfying pleasure, what feast 
of vision, what wealth of fancy, what sense 
of glory all about you, in that one thought ! 
There is nothing vulgar about the sea. 
The meanest little village that ever hid 
behind the cliffs or stood square to a bay 
is glorified by being near the sea. It has 
entombed vessels and men, but it gave 
them royal sepulchre. There is no "pot- 
ter's field" in this great meadow of 
waters. It is a tomb for kings and true 
men. No stakes define its boundaries. 
No surveyor puts his chain upon it. No 
man or class dares to assert claim of 
ownership to it. It is always sublime. 
The voice of God is here heard audibly, 
and the soul amidst these heaving wonders 
casts off at times its "muddy vesture of 
decay" and throbs with a sense of its 
immortality. 



(CHILDREN have kept Christmas alive, 
and may do so when savants are dis- 
puting whether the Pyramids ever existed. 



104 At Long and 

A SMALL town tells its whole story, and 

then repeats it year after year. A 

big city owes something of the interest it 

contrives to keep alive in the mere fact that 

it is too big to be exhaustively catechised. 



HPOBACCO is a greater civilizer and 
humanizer than wine. It promotes 
social interchanges that do not volatilize 
and fade away with the short-lived ameni- 
ties of the banquet-table. The smoker 
on the railroad has a clear head and is 
responsible for his utterances. The likings 
he forms on the journey are not under 
transient excitement, and there is a cer- 
tain business precision about the confabs 
in this sanctum of the cigar and pipe. 
Men on such journeys make acquaintances 
who may prove useful to them afterwards, 
and they often receive valuable hints upon 
which they act in matters of conduct. 
The barber-shop used to be the gossip 
and news centre. The Pullman smoking 
section is a more dignified entrepot of 
talk, and a gentleman can certainly acquit 



Short Range. 105 

himself better there in the way of casual 
deliverance than with lather on his face 
and an impassive barber holding him 
down in a chair. The traveller who (not 
smoking) fails to visit this cosey and so- 
cial department of a train misses the most 
entertaining and often the most profitable 
part of the whole journey. The smokers 
are masters of the situation. 



A N accomplished Frenchman said, " The 
style is the man," and the modistes 
say, "The style is the woman." 



'T'O those who sigh for a new pleasure 
the companionship of young chil- 
dren may be commended as a source of 
purest satisfaction, if it has never been 
tried by the jaded and sated man or 
woman of the world. Little girls of ages 
ranging from four to twelve, before they 
get spoiled by vanity, infected with affec- 
tations, and absorbed with ideas of beaux 
and dress, and boys up to the age of 



106 At Long and 

fifteen, when they still love simple pas- 
times, are thoroughly enjoyable to one 
who will enter into the moods and tastes 
and fancies of these lassies and lads. The 
boys, of course, are more like young bears 
in their gambols, but there is much that 
is lovable and captivating in a simple- 
minded, romantic boy of twelve, with his 
appetite for the marvellous, his passion for 
roaming over the hills and woods, his mar- 
bles and tops and kites and jack-knife. 
The ardor, the honesty, and the very 
combativeness of one of these youngsters 
have peculiar charms to mature people, 
and awaken delicious memories of their 
own youth, its school-days, its frolics, 
its friendships, and its prismatic-tinted 
dreams. The sweet little girl of eight or 
ten years is perhaps the most winning 
creature in the whole universe, and the 
man who has never, as at a pure fountain, 
found happiness in the society of such a 
fairy has missed the happiest offering of 
life. All parents know that their children 
gave them the most joy when young. The 
fondness of old people (the grandma and 



Short Range. 107 

grandpa) for the little folks is quite ex- 
plicable. When the girl ripens into a 
"young lady" and the boy turns out his 
first moustache, the delicate and subtle 
charms of elfin-land fade away and the 
golden and purple mists dissolve into the 
common light of every day. Men feel a 
pang as their children grow up into man- 
hood and womanhood and the delicious 
confidences of an earlier date cease for- 
ever. To the denizen of a large city there 
is always pleasure in watching the children 
in the public parks, and often the most 
agreeable intimacies are established with 
these glad and frolicsome little folks. An 
old bachelor tired of club-life and the 
humdrum intercourse of fusty veterans 
like himself might often renew his youth 
by social forays among the "blue-eyed 
bandits," taking with him peace-offerings 
from the candy-stores, — not like Greek 
gifts, to betray, but Christmas souvenirs 
of benignant fellowship, to win grace there- 
with. To subjugate these fresh, pure na- 
tures and seduce them to display their 
fairy wares of mind and heart is a fine 



108 At Long and 

conquest for a June or October morning 
in a public pleasure resort ; it is a better 
investment than billiards, cards, or wine. 
And what are winter nights without chil- 
dren? No pictures, plaques, rich rugs, 
upholstery, books, or bric-a-brac can, by 
all their ingenious splendor, lend such 
lustre to the ample sitting-room as the 
bright faces and artless chat of these royal 
little potentates, — kings and queens of the 
home circle. Ye who have missed some- 
thing in philosophy or in action, seek it in 
the charmed zone of innocent children; 
there the right heart can for a while bask 
in Arcadian meadows and hear for a brief 
while the faint, far flute-notes of the earli- 
est shepherds who piped in haunted dells 
and glades. Children preserve the glory 
of the world in its purest and happiest 
estate. The devil and all his legions can- 
not prevail against them. 



'T'HERE is a phase of " women's rights" 
which seems to escape the considera- 
tion it deserves, and that is the right of 



Short Range. 109 

a young woman to remain single if she 
desires to do so. The men do not chal- 
lenge this right. It is her own sex which, 
urged by a variety of very subtle reasons, 
conspire to put a sort of stigma on women 
who have no inclination to matrimony, 
and by the opprobrious epithet of "old 
maids" force discerning and fastidious 
women into unsuitable and unhappy mar- 
riages. 



'T'AINE, in his notes on the forest of 
Fontainebleau, says, " I think I love 
a tree more than anything else on earth." 
It does not require an artist to sympathize 
with this enthusiasm. How a clump of 
trees in a plain rejoices the weary eye ! 
What beauty in a single graceful tree over- 
hanging a placid pool of clear water ! 
Who has not felt pleasure at the picture 
of a trim and pretty cottage sheltered by 
some huge oak that seems to stretch out 
its broad arms like a benignant giant to 
guard and protect all within? Children 
harmonize best with the landscape when 



no At Long and 

they are grouped on the sward beneath 
some noble tree. 

There is a striking individuality about 
trees. The elm, with its irregular branches 
and small leaves so well adapted to fleck 
the grass with pictures of light and shade, 
the sugar-maple in its autumnal bla- 
zonry of crimson and gold, the stately 
poplar, the pine, full of musical murmurs, 
the drooping willow, the birch, and the 
gum, — all have a suggestive speech of their 
own. How the boys love the chestnut 
and the shell-bark hickory, and what do- 
mestic pleasures are associated with cool 
apple-orchards in which some well minis- 
ters in the hot days and the young colts 
run at large ! Trees in groups on a hill- 
side, trees that skirt running brooks in 
which cattle stand knee-deep at mid-day, 
trees that cast their airy lines along some 
distant blue horizon, trees that greet the 
sailor approaching land, trees that invite 
the antelope on far savannas to rest in 
the grateful shade, — are they not all a boon 
and a benediction ? How could you com- 
pute in dollars and cents the value of a 



Short Range. in 

great forest tree near your dwelling, and 
what work of art could give such peren- 
nial satisfaction ? The birds come to it 
as a welcome fortress, the winds make 
music in its boughs, the evening star shines 
through it like an eye of love. The man 
who would put his profane axe to such a 
tree deserves to work in the mines of Si- 
beria. Trees bear companionship; they 
grow upon acquaintance. You begin to 
feel the grace, the benignity, the nobility 
of their presence. Stirred by a passing gale, 
they toss their manes like lions, but what 
a divine calm they wear in tranquil weather ! 
There is an air of majestic repose about 
them which soothes the spirit and rebukes 
all passion. The poets have delighted to 
celebrate them, and history has consecrated 
trees that are associated with noted events 
and personages, — the Charter Oak; the tree 
in which Charles II. secreted himself. 
Memorable men have loved to plant trees, 
and these tokens of their fondness are 
pointed out to-day. The delight which 
one takes in a tree he has watched from a 
mere twig is a singularly pure and con- 
10 



ii2 At Long and 

stant one. The Germans have a wise 
custom of planting fruit-stones along the 
highways, and in consequence their roads 
are shaded and the traveller finds abun- 
dance of fruit to cheer him as he plods 
along. Governments are taking fresh in- 
terest in the preservation of forests and 
learning their intimate connection with 
the rainfall and the preservation of streams, 
scientific societies are assiduous in point- 
ing out the relations of large tracts of 
woodland to health and to the fertility of 
the soil, and in the chief cities of the 
world parks are now regarded as the lungs 
of the town, to be kept as breathing-spots 
for the people and eternal pleasure resorts. 
A city without a park would be the by- 
word and scoff of the times. In Iowa, 
the man who plants a certain number of 
trees is exempt from taxation for five years. 
Everywhere the utility of the woods is 
being recognized, and the national au- 
thorities have interested themselves to pro- 
tect the great trees of the far West from 
vandal hands simply for the beauty and 
grandeur of these specimens. So it will 



Short Range. 113 

ever be. The world will never outgrow 
its passion for trees. As civilization be- 
comes more elaborate and artificial the 
necessity for trees and the joy in them 
will grow, and the artist, the tired mer- 
chant, the rosy-cheeked child, and the 
wandering and vagabond gypsy can at last 
meet in common under the green-wood 
tree, and share one pleasure that will defy 
all the mutations of fashion and the vaga- 
ries of human caprice. God bless the 
trees ! Cast aside your cares, man, like a 
soiled garment and refresh yourself under 
the mighty and glorious elm; the ground- 
squirrel will keep you company, and 
through the green foliage the steadfast sky 
holds tender watch upon you. 



HTHE fond lover who is shortly to be 
married flatters himself that the bride 
who is to be is engrossed with pleasing 
thoughts of himself. It is an amusing de- 
lusion. It is not of him (verdant creat- 
ure !) that the lovely maiden is dreaming. 
Her blue, brown, or hazel eyes are suffused 



ii4 -At Long and 

with the light of happy meditation, but it 
is all about clothes, raiment, wardrobe, — 
her trousseau. The word is French, and it is 
talismanic with the feminine heart. From 
the date fixed for the eventful ceremony 
until it is consummated at the altar the 
nine-lettered word of such magical import 
will occupy the young damsel's soul with 
visions of ruffs, cuffs, and flounces, gloves, 
shoes, and kerchiefs, all manner of per- 
sonal toggery, adornment, and embellish- 
ment, from a bit of lace to a perfume- 
bottle, so that the enamoured calf who is 
to be blessed with such a combination of 
nature and art is only in the thoughts of 
the bride expectant as a pretext and provo- 
cation for all this pretty pomp and prepa- 
ration. The man sentenced to be hanged 
called out from his cell window to the 
eager crowds going to the scaffold, "You 
needn't be in such a splutter; there'll be 
no fun until I get there." The bride- 
groom may console himself with such a 
vain reflection, but he is fooling himself 
with a shadow. The woman who has once 
enjoyed the intoxicating rapture of a trous- 



Short Range. 115 

seau would hardly suffer a pang if the hus- 
band were in default. Her cups of bliss 
have been full and running over, and the 
marriage may happen or not without her 
gentle spirit suffering any agitation. The 
chief thought of her existence has been 
clothes, and has she not realized the 
crowning glory and apotheosis of clothes 
once and for all in that enchanting hour 
when she spreads out her treasures for the 
admiration (?) of some bosom friend ? 
What can fate ever do to blunt the keen 
felicity of this signal moment ? All roads 
lead to Rome, and all the paths and by- 
paths of her life have led up to this radiant 
goal. The inventor who has perfected his 
idea, the warrior who sees that the battle 
is won, the poet or painter who puts in 
words or colors the vision that has en- 
tranced him, may fancy it is a supreme 
moment of joy, but these emotions are 
tame compared with that sovereign peace 
which broods like a dove over the bosom 
of the seraphic young female contem- 
plating her marriage outfit and satisfied 
that it is as rounded and harmonious as a 
10* 



n6 At Long and 

globe of pearl, — not even a hair-pin want- 
ing. If men could ever undergo such 
divine transports as that, they would abjure 
tobacco and beer and crown the mantua- 
maker as Goddess of Reason. Man is 
essentially a stupid animal, and never did 
recognize the untold felicities of dress. 
Let him find an equivalent for a trous- 
seau, and he may be happy yet. 



TN my "salad days" we were forced to 
say good-by to Tell and his apple. But 
the mousing owls left Cinderella's pretty, 
petite, glass slipper unharmed. 



ALL things are possible to work, and 
happiness is among them. The will- 
ing hand and contented heart are in alli- 
ance. No one ever realizes the supreme 
felicity of well-paid employment so keenly 
as the one who by chance or miscon- 
duct has lost it and wanders around a 
suitor and a mendicant. Then the vision 
of past labors comes clad in angelic robes, 



Short Range. 117 

and the sore and wounded spirit craves 
only one boon, that of a fresh opportunity 
and the sweet, proud privilege of recog- 
nized and remunerated toil. How pleasant 
it is to earn one's own money ! How gall- 
ing to be dependent on the bounty of 
others ! Who of an independent mind 
would not make the sacrifice of useless 
tastes and needless luxuries so as to be 
forehanded and free from penury and the 
shame of constant supplication ? A man 
who gets into the chronic habit of asking 
for help is gone. He loses aim, snap, grit, 
and hope. His faith in his own powers 
is destroyed, and it is but a step to the 
kitchen door, hat in hand, asking alms. 
It is work — all-glorious, all-potential, all- 
saving work — which lifts men out of this 
slough of degradation, puts new light in 
their eyes, gives firm cadence to their step, 
and enables them to meet their fellows on 
terms of equal footing and dignity. It is 
respectable even when poorly paid. It 
lends lustre to wealth when it is richly 
paid. It is at all times the one grand, 
wholesome thing in the universe. It is 



n8 At Long and 

sanitary. It is creative. It conserves. 
It is the parent of all the physical things 
admired of men. It replaces what fire 
and water have destroyed. It helps save 
men and women from vice, and its broad 
arms aid those who have fallen by the 
way. Ye who have work verily have hope. 
Work and despair do not travel together. 



A DEAD affection is the most mournful 
thing in the category of mortal ills, 
and no flowers are ever cast upon its for- 
lorn srrave. 



HTHERE is one person who does not 
figure in the society columns of the 
newspapers during the heated term as en- 
joying the salt air on the coast of the At- 
lantic or the coolness of deep mountain 
glens. That person is the good plodding 
housewife, who has been patiently prepar- 
ing fruit-preserves in a hot kitchen, care- 
fully labelling the jars and taking homely 
comfort in the thought of how her chil- 



Short Range. 119 

dren and friends will enjoy the sweet- 
meats in due season. Her Newport and 
Cape May are in her heart. There may 
be found the pulsations of an ocean of 
love and kindly solicitude only to be 
stilled by death. She is one of a great 
army of faithful toilers whose lives are de- 
voted to providing for the comfort and 
pleasure of others, and it makes little odds 
what season rules, whether it be the volupt- 
uous spring, the regnant summer, autumn's 
blazonry, or winter's glittering coat of 
mail, her willing hands and feet are ever 
busy at some office of domestic care, and 
too often only the all- seeing eye of the 
Great Master returns any loving recogni- 
tion for a life worn and wasted in behalf 
of others. 



C\$ all the forms of mental disease, the 
one which needs most sharp-sighted 
watching is that which settles down into a 
dreary conviction of the emptiness of all 
things. The man in whom this malady 
becomes chronic has no future and no 



120 At Long and 

hope. It is an ailment which enlarges 
itself like a cancer and eats out all the 
springs of cheerfulness and vigor. It be- 
gins with repudiating the value of every 
human aim and pursuit, and ends with re- 
jecting the thought of God's care for His 
creatures. 



>r ~PHE wandering organ-grinder invades 
the suburban villages and delights 
the young rural folk. His instrument is 
of a primitive pattern, and his repertoire 
is not select, but the plaintive and ear- 
crucifying discords meet with the unquali- 
fied approbation of wide-eyed juveniles, 
and the shabby and resigned-looking mu- 
sician touches the sympathies of the little 
people. He, too, regards these small per- 
sons as his peculiar friends and patrons, 
the constituency which he seeks in many 
a weary tramp, and on which he depends 
for his daily bread. Reviled by all the 
rest of the world, and perhaps conscious 
that his music is calculated to provoke the 
wrath of a sensitive ear, his dull, sad eye 



Short Range. 121 

is ever on the watch for the untutored 
children to whom this forlorn and wan- 
dering minstrel is interesting as a gypsy- 
tale, and whose doleful strains stir many 
vague fancies that only the child bosom 
knows. After all, there is something 
touching in the relation which this poor 
roaming vagabond with his rude instru- 
ment sustains with the little folks the wide 
world over. Under the stars he has no 
friends but these, and save for them — 
dear innocents ! — the dismal wretch would 
perish by the way-side. He and his organ 
have a following that kings might envy, a 
clientage without guile and yet unspoiled 
by time. Who shall say that his lines 
have not fallen in pleasant places ? 



''THERE is no doubt that men absurdly 
plume themselves on indifferent 
achievements. The athlete is swollen 
with importance over a leap which a 
mountain lion could easily excel, and 
even the savant takes on airs over a pro- 
posed discovery which only illuminates 



122 At Long and 

a faint spot and leaves boundless realms 
unexplored. 



'"THERE are persons who have no more 
business with poetry than with opium 
or liquor. Their true wisdom is in plain 
work and plain speech. 



HPHERE is something radically defective 
about the individual who does not 
relish an old-fashioned almanac ; who does 
not refresh himself with its pithy sayings, 
its homely anecdotes, its recipes, its revela- 
tions about the stars ; who does not find a 
subtle pleasure in its quaint pictures, and 
somehow associate this popular vehicle of 
odds and ends of lore with cider and 
hickory-nuts, spinning-wheels, household 
aprons, old clocks, and simple virtues. 
In the family room of the house have a 
Bible, a Worcester's "Unabridged," and 
a good old almanac. Let a few things 
remain to revive the memories of the early 
days ere the aesthetic craze had come to 



Short Range. 123 

transmogrify every apartment. The re- 
turn to solid old furniture was a reaction 
against veneer, and scattered amidst the 
fancy articles which now challenge the 
eye in every house of any pretension there 
ought to be a few things charged with an- 
cient memories and connecting the present 
with the past. What grown-up American 
can pick up a "Peter Parley" without a 
certain emotion? and the genuine old al- 
manac always suggests patriarchal tastes 
and lives which have not altogether been 
invaded by the spirit of the modern icono- 
clast. 



1LTORACE WALPOLE must be credited 
with one pungent saying: "Life is 
a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to 
those who feel." 



HP HERE are men and women who have 

an established reputation of being 

silly who are usually found to be very 

obliging, and who sometimes show gleams 



124 At Long and 

of native shrewdness that puzzle those 
who plume themselves on their judg- 
ment. It would be a queer thing if it 
could be demonstrated unanswerably that 
the silly people make as few mistakes in 
the long run as the people of admitted 
ability. The errors of the head are so 
often compensated for by goodness of dis- 
position and heart that the sum total of 
their blunders does not, after all, make 
up such a terrible record. Finally, those 
who are reported to be rather silly are not 
always so silly as they seem. Which 
could be most easily spared, Goldsmith 
or Dr. Johnson ? 



T_JAS it ever occurred to any one to 
note the time in which he really 
began to take a deep and tender interest 
in humanity, so that the commonest la- 
borer would suggest more than all the 
splendors of the physical universe ? Men 
pass through epochs of psychological re- 
lation to one another. The young per- 
son rarely discriminates ; he accepts all as 



Short Range. 125 

they appear; he believes and trusts. 
Then there comes a time when ambition 
sets in, and men and women are con- 
sidered only as they subserve it. There 
are periods of indifference or distrust or 
downright antipathy. At last the time 
comes when the feeling of kinship and the 
profound thought of a common destiny be- 
gin to excite a sympathetic interest towards 
the masses of human beings about us. 
Then observation and study of character 
follow in earnest, and even the passionate 
lover of nature finds that his mind and 
heart are more moved by the checkered 
fortunes of his fellow-mortals than by the 
beauty of the earth and the glory of the 
stars. He ponders upon the struggles and 
sufferings of his kind. He is touched 
with admiration for the brave exploits of 
genius or heroism. He meditates on the 
persevering efforts through all these thou- 
sands of years, on the part of these men 
and women, to reach after and to express 
some noble and fair ideal. He begins to 
feel in his inmost soul that there must be 
some divine spark in this picturesque 



126 At Long and 

humanity. He throbs with a mysterious 
sense of brotherhood, and in rating at a 
higher estimate the mortals who surround 
him, he sets at a better value the impor- 
tance and dignity of his own individuality, 
ennobles life, and more vividly grasps the 
idea of immortality. With the deep- 
lodged sympathy for others comes the real 
conception of the inherent worth of the 
race, its deserts under all infirmities, and 
its bright possibilities. As the centuries 
roll on, the sympathy of man for man 
develops and tells in legislation, in cus- 
toms, and in all the offices of humanity 
which distinguish Christian civilization. 
Men are no longer mere moving phan- 
toms to the recluse, or mere food for 
gunpowder to the aggressive statesman ; 
they are steadily indicating the good that 
is within them and becoming bound to- 
gether by the ties of common struggle, 
experience, interest, and affection. To 
promote the common welfare is becoming 
the avowed object of liberal govern- 
ments, and to help each other a current 
maxim and practice among individuals. 



Short Range. 127 

Friendly guilds are formed to give organ- 
ized direction to humane sentiments, and 
the awakened tenderness of the times pene- 
trates even to the convict's cell to mitigate 
the horrors of penal degradation and, if 
possible, to work reform. It may be truly 
said that in the classic ages of the Greeks 
and Romans the interchanging spirit of 
cordial humanity which is now visible did 
not obtain, and among the features of 
modern progress which deserve to be es- 
teemed, none rank higher than this dis- 
position to acknowledge the intrinsic 
worth of manhood and womanhood, and 
the high obligation to help all reach a 
nobler plane of humanity. It is the 
crown jewel of our times, and the Lapidary 
has not yet finished His work. 



■\X7"HY is it that people are invested with 
more importance while in a Pull- 
man coach than when they reach their 
journey's end and are turned loose into 
the streets? The retail grocer from a 
little town is outwardly as impressive as 
11* 



128 At Long and 

a United States Senator or a great rail- 
way magnate whilst on the road. As soon 
as the train reaches his depot and he steps 
upon the platform his greatness disappears 
like an exhalation of the mist, and he is 
only a small grocer again, one of the gen- 
eral and undistinguished mob. Is it the 
circumstance that the Pullman coach im- 
plies the possession of money, habits of 
luxurious leisure, or somewhat fastidious 
taste that invests its temporary occupants 
with factitious dignity ? It is certain that 
the other cars on the train do not magnify 
personality in like manner. It is a little 
odd, too, that people whom you survey 
with interest in one of these parlor coaches 
you regard with total indifference when 
you meet them afterwards on the street. 
They become common as soon as they are 
severed from the moving drawing-room, 
just as a circus rider is vulgar when de- 
tached from his horse and the blazonry of 
the ring. Another feature of travel that 
is a little interesting is the factitious dig- 
nity of the reserved guests of the Pullman 
coach. So long as these silent habitants 



Short Range. 129 

of the car preserve silence they are studied 
with speculative ardor. When they break 
the enchantment by commonplace inqui- 
ries or suggestions, they fall at once into 
the ranks. These remarks apply only to 
the men. The women, especially if they 
are young and pretty and agreeable, have 
no mystery about them, and do not lose 
their charm when the final station is 
reached. Perhaps this fact may excite the 
surmise that there is more humbug about 
men than about women. 

Invalid ladies on the cars are always 
objects of tender interest, and persons in 
mourning awaken a train of reflection. 
Children are the especial pets of the Pull- 
man coach travellers if they are engaging 
in their appearance and behavior, and 
little girls on their first journey are nota- 
bly winning and become bosom friends of 
the whole coach. There is a fine field of 
study in the various porters on the cars, 
and there are functionaries in this line who 
surpass the traditional hotel clerk in con- 
sequential airs and freezing demeanor. 
As a rule, however, the porters relax, and 



130 At Long and 

become bland and attentive towards the 
terminus of the trip, when settlement time 
approaches, and the matter is yet undeter- 
mined whether it shall be a quarter- or a 
half-dollar that will fall into the extended 
palm. Porters complain that the ladies 
forget the parting remuneration. The 
commercial traveller reveals his individu- 
ality no matter what coach he occupies. 
He is at home everywhere and deserves to 
be. He is the avant-courier of progress, 
and is as free and easy on a raft as in a 
palace steamer, ever indefatigable and use- 
ful, and entitled to better recognition than 
he gets from the churlish corporations 
which tax him for the privilege of widening 
the boundaries of trade and making civili- 
zation the common property of cities and 
the frontier. He at least is enshrouded 
in no mystery, and typifies the energy 
and genius of the age and people. 



'"FHE little bit of lace which has cost 

enough to buy a carriage and span 

of horses is what troubles several young 



Short Range. 131 

women and several elderly women. Every 
other article of wardrobe speaks for itself. 
The dresses, cloaks, furs, bonnets, gloves, 
diamonds, etc., can rapidly be summa- 
rized by the feminine eyes inspecting 
them. They tell their own story, and shed 
envy and grief and admiration, as the case 
may be, as they are duly paraded ; but this 
dainty and most costly lace which looks 
no better than a cheaper article, how, oh, 
how shall its value in dollars and dimes be 
announced to a stupid and despairing 
world ? This is the thought which causes 
that gentle bosom to palpitate and those 
dove-like eyes to undergo so many change- 
ful expressions. When will the ecstatic 
moment come when, without ill-breeding, 
the exact financial figure can with sweet 
and shrinking modesty be told ? How, in 
lisping accents and in an involuntary way, 
shall the dear seraph tell her dearest friend 
the price of this single piece of personal 
furniture, and make her sigh for a secluded 
apartment where she can relieve herself in 
a flood of rainbow tears ? This is the dis- 
tressing puzzle, the agonizing conundrum. 



132 At Long and 

But for that bit of lace, the walking in- 
ventory of goods would have recognition 
and voucher as full and mellow as the 
harvest moon. It alone impedes that am- 
ple concession from all surrounding women 
which shall fill the goblet of triumph brim- 
ful and overflowing. Why does not 
fashion permit the price to be worked in 
embroidery, so as to save all these agita- 
tions and illuminate the situation at once ? 
How easy it would be to grade the fair 
creatures from a sublimated moneyed point 
of view if they floated around with tabs 
indicating what gold, silver, or bank-bills 
they carry in robes, pearls, or gossamer ! 
It might so happen that a single woman 
with a rose-bud on her breast would attract 
the fantastic homage of some poetic fool, 
but the aggregate feminine worship would 
gravitate by the scale of tabulated prices, 
and the gazelle with the miraculous lace 
would sip the nectar of applause. The 
women's convention really ought to take 
this matter in hand. They are fooling 
away their time on much fustier affairs. 
In the name of the Graces, why should our 



Short Range. 133 

charming maiden or supreme dame wear 
that enchanted bit of divine linen, not 
cotton mixed, and have its fiscal rank un- 
known ? 



HTHE hardest thing on this globe to pros- 
titute, yea, even in a London dance- 
hall, is music. There is always a floating 
perfume of the supernal about it. 



T^HE small towns in the United States 
— towns of from four thousand to 
ten thousand people — present interesting 
phases of economic and social life to an 
attentive observer. These places have 
their town hall for travelling shows, their 
bustling hotel with its omnibuses, their 
showy residence of the richest man, their 
bevies of pretty girls and keen-witted, 
dashing young men, and a general city 
air in miniature. The honest farmer who 
comes into them is impressed with their 
importance, and the country lass who 
visits her friends in them is as elated as 



134 -At Long and 

any maiden of Gotham on her first trip 
to Paris. In these towns personal quali- 
ties tell, and everybody knows everybody. 



TF the benighted Greeks and Romans had 
known of the pipe and solacing weed, 
they would have erected a statue to " My 
Lady Nicotine." 



"POPULATION in civilized countries is, 
within limits, a measure of wealth 
and strength, but there is a disposition 
nowadays to overestimate the importance 
of numbers. The England of Queen Anne 
did not have over seven million people, 
according to Edward Morris's sketch of 
that reign, and the Athens of Pericles had 
fewer people than Dayton, Ohio. This 
tendency to boast of population is akin to 
the exaggerated value attached to great 
riches. It is no longer fashionable to 
speak of any one worth fifty thousand 
dollars as a rich man, and there is a faint 
flavor of contempt mingled with any allu- 



Short Range. 135 

sion to the size of the armies engaged in 
the war of the American Revolution and 
in the Mexican War. Bulk and numbers 
now enlist admiration. We delight to 
point out with each successive census how 
big our population is becoming, and there 
are occasional intimations that our terri- 
torial area ought to be enlarged. Perhaps 
we may end by valuing quantity above 
quality, and reject the idea of a state em- 
bodied in the noble ode of Sir William 
Jones. So curiously rooted is this over- 
appreciation of numbers that the habitant 
of a town of three hundred thousand peo- 
ple flatters himself that he is in some way 
more important than the unfortunate man 
doomed to live in a town of one hundred 
thousand people. We are not sure that 
we have not already given a shock to the 
lover of size and numbers by our reference 
to the census of Athens, and may thereby 
blight some budding Hellenic taste that 
would have relished Plato if he had only 
lived in a larger town. Everything must 
be Brobdingnagian to attract. The size of 
the roses has been increased by culture 
12 



'■■■•■ 



136 At Long and 

until there are a few stunning specimens 
that might be mistaken for red cabbages. 
Big houses, big ships, big cannon, big 
railroads, big everything but men, intel- 
lectually and morally. They are found, 
when found at all, without reference to 
the census. Cincinnatus at the plough 
and Daniel Boone in the Kentucky forests 
owed none of their greatness to swarming 
multitudes. 



''THE silent consideration which is shown 
a human corpse is a more eloquent 
sermon than any divine, however eloquent, 
has ever preached. 



TT is fortunate that the imagination is so 
dulled that we do not suffer more from 
the calamities of life that are not presently 
visible, but it can hardly be esteemed fortu- 
nate that we lose the keen perception of the 
beautiful in nature and art by allowing the 
fancy to wither from disuse. The man or 
woman who can take no quickened delight 



Short Range. 137 

from lofty mountain-ranges, shining lakes, 
water-falls, enamelled pastures, the solemn 
splendor of the stars, paintings, statuary, 
noble architecture, and graceful articles of 
ornament, because he or she has become 
wholly dedicated to utilitarian ideas and 
lost the sense of the beautiful, leads a dry 
and juiceless spiritual life. A certain exer- 
cise of the imaginative faculty sheds joy 
even upon the home circle. It makes the 
inmates of home understand each other, 
and is an ally of generous sympathy, a 
promoter of rational affections. It is not 
altogether out of place in the business 
world. Kept within bounds, it liberalizes 
business transactions and imparts dignity 
and a high sense of honor to practical 
affairs. It is useful in statesmanship when 
it is restrained from sentimental vagaries, 
and it seems vitally essential to religious 
development. Without it how are men 
to have faith ? That was a pregnant say- 
ing of Mr. Beecher : "The true man builds 
in air." To keep this subtle quality from 
dying of inanition, cultivate the poets and 
all artists, and surrender yourself with 



138 At Long and 

child-like affection to the loveliness of the 
physical universe. 



"\XTHY speak of Paradise, — those of us 
who give a mere passing glance and 
conventional compliment to a freshly- 
plucked rose, lightning charged with 
beauty ? 



TN this aesthetic age the old family por- 
traits are apt to fare badly. If they 
are not positively consigned to the lumber- 
room, they are assigned some obscure and 
dark corner of the house where they 
may not look down reproachfully upon 
modern bric-a-brac and decorative gew- 
gaws. These venerable pictures are occa- 
sionally dusted and refurbished, and the 
junior members of the household are re- 
minded of the merits of their worthy and 
dead ancestors, but this spasm of fidelity 
to the grandfathers and grandmothers 
soon passes away and the old faces are 
hidden in the gloom just as they have 



Short Range. 139 

long been accustomed to in the deep 
shadow of the tomb. It goes without 
saying that the "counterfeit present- 
ment" of a living patriarch whose rent- 
roll is large and whose expected will is a 
precious and pregnant piece of literature 
does not share this neglect. It may be 
counted on to hold the place of honor 
amidst all the tapestry, the plaques and 
the paintings and the ormolu. If the old 
gentleman or lady of ample estate happens 
to drop in, he or she may feel a grateful 
throb at the sight of their own weather- 
beaten but kindly countenance on the 
walls, but let them not hug the flattering 
delusion to their bosoms that they are to 
hold permanent possession there. Old 
lace and an ugly old table or chair stand 
a better show in the modern drawing- 
room than the picture of any old aunt or 
uncle who has been decently buried and 
can do no further good or harm in this 
mortal sphere. It is a rapid age and one 
not given to reminiscence. Pride in a 
worthy stock no longer counts for as much 
as it did in the earlier days of the re- 
12* 



140 At Long and 

public. The old folks, long interred, are 
mildly conceded to have been good 
enough in their day and generation, but 
the fond preservation of their memories 
once characteristic in good families in 
civilized countries has given way to an 
iconodastic spirit which hacks down the 
idols of the heart just as it sweeps away 
old creeds, old fashions, and old cus- 
toms. Show us a family which still holds 
the ancient portraits in solid reverence, 
and you will have shown us one proof 
against the seductions of shoddy, and 
with convictions in various right chan- 
nels immutable amidst all the changing 
tastes and opinions of an age that is in a 
fiery state of transition, cutting loose from 
the old and not yet established on new 
foundations. The dead must still live 
with us if they represented anything of 
eternal sound report. 



'"THERE are felicities unknown to the 

masculine mind. Who can compute 

the delightful emotions that agitate the 



Short Range. 141 

young lady who is about to go away from 
home on a visit under auspices which prom- 
ise to make her the cynosure of some ad- 
miring circle ? No young man ever makes 
a social foray with like excitement and 
such rose-colored fancies. The prepara- 
tion of her toilet is attended with number- 
less charming conceits. She indulges in 
a host of sweet vagaries about the distant 
realm in which she is shortly to figure as 
a new attraction. And it may be, per- 
haps is, that in the midst of these varie- 
gated waves of feeling an image comes 
of the yet unseen and unknown person 
whom fate has willed shall offer her a 
devotion dearer than all other gifts of 
love or friendship that may signalize this 
epoch in her life. This romantic thought 
is not revealed to the winds, lest they 
betray the secret, and the maiden half 
shrinks in timid sensibility from its con- 
templation. There is about this hidden 
fancy a delicate rose perfume, and it 
lives in a chamber of virginal inno- 
cence guarded with all the modest craft 
of the sex from all inquest or confession. 



142 At Long and 

What mind is so hardened in the world's 
prosaic strife as not to recognize some- 
thing exquisitely pretty and pleasing in 
this young person's artless excitement 
over such a campaign ? How free it is 
from anything sordid or coarse or cruel ! 
What grace hovers about all the bustle 
and stir ! What child-like rapture breaks 
forth at times in spite of all efforts at 
restraint ! Who would annihilate the years 
ahead and replace this fair picture with 
some dark vision of disappointed hopes, 
of sorrow and care ? 

" Gather ye rose-buds while ye may ; 
Old Time is still a-flying." 

And so brief is the period of a young 
woman's peculiar triumphs in the only 
field which man's ambition has allotted 
her, that even the angels in their high 
estate must wish her radiant favors while 
youth and grace still go joyously with 
her. This is a period in a life whose 
crystal depths no poet's plummet has ever 
sounded, and the blunt mind of man may 



Short Range. 143 

well hold it too beautiful and sacred for 
profane regard. 



X-TAPPILY, there are no children and 
few women who are cynics, and the 
vast multitudes of those who labor hon- 
estly are free from this evil disposition. 
Cynicism does no good whatever in this 
world. 



A CONVENIENT way, outside of sta- 
tistics, to ascertain whether a nation 
is stationary or positively retrograding is 
to note what eminent men it is producing. 
Tried by such a standard, Spain, Portu- 
gal, the South American states, and a 
large part of Asia do not figure respect- 
ably. Japan, within twenty years, has de- 
veloped many able statesmen who have 
engineered important reforms. No dec- 
ade goes by in our own land without 
adding to the roll of illustrious names 
which serves to keep alive a generous flame 
among our people. We do well to build 



144 At Long and 

monuments in honor of those who have 
served the republic notably. These com- 
memorative symbols in stone or bronze 
teach and inspire. Rome was strong 
whilst she was faithful to the memory of 
her noblest citizens. 



HTHE man who laughs furnished a text 
for Hugo. The man who whistles 
must occasionally furnish a theme for by- 
standers. Boys, of course, are expected 
to whistle ; indeed, all things are expected 
of boys ; they are bound by no laws. It 
is allowable, too, to whistle in passing a 
graveyard at night, and there is a single, 
long-drawn whistle expressive of other- 
wise speechless incredulity. But when a 
grown-up and rather elderly man enters a 
tavern and, seating himself, begins de- 
liberately and in extenso to whistle a set 
tune, the case calls for cogitation. The 
early history of such a man would be 
interesting, and the course of life which 
has enabled him to whistle when he has 
passed middle age. It would be a curious 



Short Range. 145 

matter to ascertain if he have a family, and 
how they treat him 3 whether he is a mem- 
ber of any church denomination ; what 
political party he belongs to \ whether he 
has an independent income, and other facts 
shedding light upon his character, train- 
ing, and career. Such a man might be 
expected to rise solemnly from a dinner- 
table and execute a jig. 



"\17HY is it that printed speech carries 
so much more weight than oral 
utterance ? The ablest men in social in- 
tercourse do not sway your judgment like 
the silent types. A Jewish rabbi en- 
deavored to find a key to this curious 
problem in the fact that the printed Bible 
was one of the earliest books read by the 
masses. They received its deliverances 
as authoritative, and part of this sanctity 
has unconsciously been transferred to all 
printed matter. This is at least an in- 
genious suggestion. Perhaps there is an 
additional reason worth entertaining, — viz., 
that what is in print purports to be the 



146 At Long and 

ultimate expression on any given subject, 
and impresses you by its mute and in- 
flexible dogmatism, whilst conversational 
utterances are modified, qualified, or well- 
nigh retracted as free talk goes on, so that 
they fail to command absolute assent. It 
is even true that you do not attach as 
much value to a book written by a man 
you intimately know as to one written by 
a stranger; you know your friend's weak- 
nesses and infirmities, and judge the book 
accordingly. 



vy HEREVER kini:il y words and deeds 

are spoken and done, there the 
unseen flowers are shedding their fairy 
fragrance, and there the spirit of the 
beautiful is keeping everlasting watch and 
ward. He says a most foolish thing who 
disparages the children of song. They 
are children after all, for they do not cry 
out that Diana of the Ephesians is great, 
and they refuse to bow down to false 
idols. They have the simplicity to be- 
lieve that man cannot live by bread alone, 



Short Range. 147 

and they have the courage to love and 
suffer and hope and to cheer up the muddy 
senses of the worldlings and inspire them 
with visions from on high. It is health 
and not disease to keep alive within us 
the assenting condition upon which we 
may entertain angels unawares. 



'"THERE is a little article of feminine 
attire which does not cut an exten- 
sive figure in the fashion-plates, rarely 
taxes the genius of the modistes, and is 
not celebrated in toast or song, which, 
nevertheless, is as full of pleasing domestic 
associations as any habiliment connected 
with the sex; that article is the apron. 
It does not belong to the street or the 
drawing-room. It is, therefore, essentially 
a home piece of personal furniture, and 
when clean and neat and pretty, as it is 
always with careful housewives and their 
daughters, gives more pleasure to husband, 
father, and children than all the silks and 
satins, the flounces and furbelows, that 
speak of the shop and the mantua-maker. 
13 



148 At Long and 

A comely housewife with her spotless 
apron attending to home duties is then 
in her glory; she is mistress and queen. 
Change the scene, and let her adorn her- 
self for the parlor or the street, and she 
takes place with the rest of the world ; 
but moving to and fro from kitchen and 
dining-room and through the sleeping- 
apartments, supervising with gentle so- 
licitude the details of home, she rules 
supreme, the loving and lovable arbitress 
of all those little comforts that make the 
tired workman glad to cross his own 
threshold, and children remember with 
quiet joy in after-years the sweet liberties 
and privileges that followed like a trail of 
light the dear little woman with the apron. 
The young lover may have fond thoughts 
of some opera-cloak rich in color, but as 
the years roll by he will have a tenderer 
feeling for the white apron and the willing 
feet and hands going with it than ever the 
daintiest festal robe inspired. There are 
things that belong to the general world, 
and these things never convey lasting mes- 
sages to the heart ; and there are things 



Short Range. 149 

deeply baptized with the very precious 
dew of home itself and saturated with sug- 
gestions of its inner life, and the modest 
apron is one of these eloquent things, 
around which smiles of happiness or tears 
of ever-loving sorrow may gather. All 
this world over and in all the ages of time 
the simple things are the expressive ones. 
The simple Saxon words are the strongest. 
The simple rose or honeysuckle, or the 
familiar lilac, gives most soul pleasure. 
Simple old-fashioned manners and virtues 
wear best. And so it is with even the 
dress of men and women. The sailor's 
jacket tells more than the fop's "Prince 
Albert," and the straw hat which that 
young girl wears in her garden is more 
beautiful than any head-gear she will 
ever import from Paris. No amount of 
talk can ever add emphasis to this fact, 
and none can alter or defeat it. There 
are times and occasions for all kinds of 
speech, manner, and wardrobe, but so 
long as the word home stands for any- 
thing in the affections of human beings 
the apron and its open secrets will hold 



150 At Long and 

first place in our hearts as a household 
symbol rich with unspeakable treasures of 
love. 



(^)N the whole, things are so distributed 
that every one may have a little taste 
of distinction. The teamster in a battle 
is as elated as the commander-in-chief. 
The ordinances of nature are not unkind. 



A MERICAN families, as a rule, have one 
failing that deserves to be pointed 
out, and that is their practical indifference 
to the preservation of family souvenirs, 
heirlooms, and mementos. Our people 
are migratory, and suffer these articles, full 
as they are of special interest and tender 
or proud associations, to be scattered and 
lost. The younger members of the house- 
hold attach little or no value to family 
portraits, old letters, and furniture that 
have a personal history. We knew a lit- 
erary man to complain with much feeling 
that neither his wife, daughters, nor sons 



Short Range. 151 

thought enough of any of his writings 
(even those which embodied his person- 
ality) to save anything in print or manu- 
script which he had written. It fares so 
with pictures, ancient jewelry or silver, 
tresses of hair, articles of wardrobe that 
ought to have touching claims to safe- 
keeping. The boys go right and left over 
the broad land and follow their own am- 
bitions, leaving the past behind, and the 
girls marry and contract new ties. No 
one expects ancestral estates to remain in 
the family, but one might hope for the 
preservation of a few mementos of kin- 
dred. This is a defect in our social and 
domestic habits which means more than 
superficially appears. It indicates a sort 
of implied contempt for anything save 
present events and current belongings. 
It casts lightly aside all the mellow sug- 
gestions of by-gone years, and even the 
reproachful images of "the old familiar 
faces," and vaunts its belief only in the 
creeds and tastes and pleasures and oppor- 
tunities of the fleeting day, treating all 
that has gone before as fossiliferous or 
13* 



152 At Long and 

mouldy. Happy that soul which can re- 
joice in the glow and stir of the modern 
time without forgetting the beautiful and 
tender memories of an earlier period and 
the figures that then so eloquently ap- 
pealed from the living canvas ! Such a 
soul lives in an atmosphere that is tinted 
with the effulgence of lovable seasons 
gone, as well as the fresh bright radiance 
of the "new-born day." It unites the 
past and the present with a fairy bridge 
over which thoughts and fancies which 
belong to intervals of time long separated 
troop together and blend in natural con- 
fraternity. The present is fitly sounded 
by preserving its relations with the past. 
We cannot forget our fathers and mothers, 
our grandparents, our aunts and cousins, 
our old homes and recollections that are 
handed down to us by grateful tradition, 
without inflicting a scar upon ourselves. 
Such a habit vulgarizes. It is unwise to 
rob life, the world, and the mind of poetry 
and of love. There are "unconsidered 
trifles" in every reputable household that, 
considered with a piercing and loyal vision 



Short Range. 153 

and a noble heart, are as fruitful of value 
to you, if you will only know it, as the 
Black Hills or the Texas savannas which 
you are now pondering, map in hand. 
How much preaching shall it take to make 
these people of both sexes and of all ages 
suspect the enduring loveliness and impor- 
tance of spiritual things? 



"PROLONGED absence, unaccompanied 
by letters, is apt to dim the recol- 
lected image of any one, however loved. 



A GOOD deal of English, German, and 
French humor, in text or in pictorial 
shape, exists for the fun pure and simple. 
It will be found, on scrutiny, that much 
of the humor current in the United States 
is intended to expose some sham, rebuke 
some folly, or enforce the dictates of 
common sense. The burlesque sketches of 
the Houston Post ridicule the boisterous 
affectations of ruffianism. The Detroit 
Free Press makes " Bijah" bring into dis- 



154 At Long and 

repute the hypocrisies that have often de- 
feated justice in police courts. The in- 
imitable Chicago Tribune satires on gush 
and sentimental rhodomontade have al- 
most laughed the yellow-backed novels out 
of market. The D anbury News man has 
put domestic relations on a cheerful foot- 
ing by his lively pictures of certain femi- 
nine absurdities, and so on through the 
whole category. The most extravagant 
wit that finds its way here usually " means 
business" in puncturing some humbug or 
sending its incisive shaft straight through 
the backbone of intrenched falsehood. It 
is within bounds to say that the exquisite 
essence of American good sense is in the 
incessant, varied, and omnipresent humor 
that even invades the pulpit as well as all 
other channels. Look at this frolicsome 
business in its many masks and guises, and 
note that it does not attack any real gen- 
uine thing, but deals with the counterfeit 
article. When Artemus Ward said the 
war should go on if he had to sacrifice his 
forty-second cousin, no one was in doubt 
as to whose bare shoulders felt the lash, 



Short Range. 155 

and Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" 
made many a demagogue wince. Wit is 
a potent weapon and a useful one on this 
side of the water ; it ranks, indeed, first 
among the reformatory agencies. 



TT used to be quite a puzzle as to where 
the Indians procured the material for 
their flint implements, and a still greater 
puzzle as to how they made their arrow- 
heads, spears, knives, etc., from such un- 
manageable material. The discovery of 
flint-quarries solved the first mystery, and 
the researches of geological explorers have 
shown the interesting fact that the Indians 
had discovered that flints fresh from their 
natural beds in the earth could be split 
with precision. The savages opened deep 
trenches to the unexposed beds to secure 
such specimens as might be "chipped into 
useful shapes by the dexterous hands of 
the professional arrow-maker." In the 
reports of the Geological Survey of Indi- 
ana by the State Geologist, Cox, assisted 
by Professor Vollett and Dr. Levette, pub- 



156 At Long and 

lished in 1879, there is an interesting 
chapter on the flints in Harrison County ; 
they are found in abundance on Indian 
and Buck Creeks, in that county, and 
there the trenches are found from four to 
ten feet deep and from one-quarter to 
one-half mile in extent, which the patient 
Indian dug in search of the right kind of 
flints for his use. These geologists dis- 
covered that flint balls taken fresh from 
the quarry and tested with a smart blow 
from a hammer would break away in level 
cleavage, first from top to bottom, then 
with some practice this flattened section 
of a sphere could be cleft in straight 
lines perpendicular to the plane of depo- 
sition. The miners had been governed 
by these facts. Select materials were car- 
ried to their village homes in the shape of 
sectional blocks and cones, to be wrought 
into implements. As the material could 
only be worked successfully when fresh 
from the quarry, and while it retained an 
excess of water, the blocks and cones were 
buried in damp earth to prevent the escape 
of moisture until the workmen were ready 






Short Range. 157 

to chip them into the desired shapes. 
Blocks of limestone were used as anvils 
and granite boulders as hammers. Speak- 
ing of the quarry-pits in Harrison County, 
the reports from which we obtain these 
facts say that flints enough to satisfy the 
wants of the savage hunters and warriors 
of the interior of the continent for a cen- 
tury had evidently been mined there. 
Chips and splinters by the wagon-load are 
found there. The writer found that in 
Wyandotte Cave, in Crawford County, In- 
diana, there were unmistakable evidences 
that the Indians resorted to this cavern to 
obtain flints, which are in great abundance 
in the cave. 



HPHERE is a virgin field not yet fairly 
entered by the American novelist 
and student of novel types of character 
and peculiar social aspects. We refer to 
the Minorcan community settled in St. Au- 
gustine, Florida. Whilst Lowell, Holmes, 
and others have depicted the typical Yan- 
kee, Strother the Virginian, Bret Harte 



158 At Long and 

the Californian, Cable the Creole, Bald- 
win and the author of the " Dukesborough 
Sketches" the Georgian, Craddock the 
native of the Tennessee mountains, and 
Gilbert Parker the Hudson's Bay people, 
the descendants of the colonists whom Dr. 
Turnbull took to the Halifax River (Flor- 
ida) in the last century, and who revolted 
against his tyranny and marched up the 
coast to St. Augustine, have not yet been 
treated as Albert Rhodes did the French 
at home. They have special festivities, 
special dishes, peculiar superstitions, and 
marked moral and intellectual character- 
istics which invite inspection. 



AS the summer approaches, there are 
delights in the hills for those who 
seek them with a willing mind. Now the 
woods begin to be peopled with the hum 
of innumerable insects, and blended with 
the drowsy sound is the soft rippling mur- 
mur of the breeze through the young 
leaves. The bee is already surfeiting 
itself in the dandelions in the pasture 



Short Range. 159 

that gleams below the wooded heights. 
This bewitching little water-fall, hidden in 
a secreted alcove, is lovelier than rivers. 
Its spray falls upon ledges green with 
moss, and the red-bird and yellow-bird 
take their baths in its rock basins. One 
can listen by the hour to the liquid gurgle 
of this delicious fountain, and it will re- 
pay you to follow its shining waters down 
the leafy ravine through which they sing 
their way to the great sea. Now you can 
find the red haw and the wild plum-tree, 
inspect the grape-vines, and note whether 
the beech and hickory promise a fine 
yield. Late flowers and many aromatic 
plants will invite regard, and you may do 
a little geologizing if you are of an ener- 
getic mood. Mosses and ferns solicit a 
passing glance, and if you are making a 
bouquet, we counsel you to include the 
May-apple of the woods. Its tropical- 
looking leaves, spreading like a canopy 
over the great white flower with yellow 
petals, is a beautiful crown to the flowers 
you group under it. When you descend 
from the lofty hills into the meadows at 



160 At Long and 

sunset, you may look out for spearmint, 
and close the day with a pensive recol- 
lection of the julep you took with a friend 
of school-day memory long years ago. 
This suggestion is of course addressed to 
the sterner sex. 



A CERTAIN credulity belongs to a 
frank and honest and hearty nature, 
and when it is totally extinct there is no 
fire of zeal left for any good cause. The 
"man of the world," as he is conceived, 
and as he sometimes actually is, has 
brought himself to such a barren state 
intellectually and morally that, if not 
downright wicked, he is indubitably stupid, 
though such a charge would provoke more 
indignation in his placid bosom than any 
other that could be made. The one who 
has fallen into the chronic habit of doubt- 
ing and cavilling never originates a gener- 
ous idea, never communicates a generous 
glow to any person or enterprise, is utterly 
unfruitful and nugatory. Instead of life 
leading on to such an end, it properly 



Short Range. 161 

leads on to an enlargement of faith, a 
quickening of sympathies, a keener reali- 
zation of how much there is to admire 
and to believe in, and those who have 
profited most by contact with men and 
women and their affairs come out of all 
this multiform and many-colored experi- 
ence hopeful, trustful, and full of sweet 
charities of mind and manners. The 
typical "man of the world" is a sad fail- 
ure, — the saddest of all except one wholly 
abandoned to vice. 



T T is doubtful whether those vast extended 
landscapes so much vaunted and to 
which tourists go at whatever cost furnish 
as much abiding pleasure as certain scenes 
on a more miniature scale. After a while 
the panoramic views visible from moun- 
tain-top are not found to have that subtle 
and enduring charm that attaches to a 
single mountain-stream, a deep pool of 
pellucid water, a notable picturesque tree 
in a favorable situation, certain glorified 
meadows, a serpentine path through noble 



1 62 At Long and 

woods flanked by wild ravines, or even 
swamps and marshes at certain seasons and 
under special lights and shadows. These 
are little pictures that are full of sweetness. 
An old farm-house, with ancient well and 
orchard, can touch the heart more per- 
suasively than miles of hill and valley, 
and to a loving eye the evening star in 
some pastoral spot often gives balm and 
joy. After the first ejaculations of won- 
der are over, the tourists rarely linger 
long, even to admire the variegated land- 
scape stretching away from the heights at 
Lake Lucerne, but a sympathetic eye will 
single out some herdsman's hut, and the 
responsive fancy will do the rest. A true 
lover of nature individualizes. The con- 
ventional "views" are not the ones which 
sink deepest into the soul. 



HTHE immortal boy longs for the days 
when vacation will set him free 
to have illimitable marbles, mumble-peg, 
shinny, swims in country brooks, raids 
in orchard or melon-patch, and arch- 



Short Range. 163 

ery practice on cat-birds. He puts his 
hands deep in his pockets and indulges 
in frequent reveries. His face is as inno- 
cent as a seraph's, but it will be prudent to 
keep the cakes and jelly-jar under lock and 
key. This cherub has long been chafing 
under the double restraint paternal and 
pedagogical, and when school breaks up 
and he spreads his pinions you will hear 
from him. It is a pity to confine him to 
a town. He ought to be let loose in the 
wide pastures and shaggy hills. He needs 
plenty of room for his varied talents, and 
in an ample form he will display a versa- 
tility for extracting all the cream that 
there is in the rural cocoa-nut, that is the 
wonder and the despair of jaded people 
and a great source of admiration for the 
rustic folks. He will make it uncomfort- 
able for snakes and ground-hogs, and his 
sling-shot will give the glazier plenty of 
work ere the summer is over. The bees 
know the energetic stripling, and have no 
love for him, but in the end he will come 
out conqueror. In fact, the immortal boy 
is the one living creature who can eat cu- 
14* 



164 At Long and 

cumbers and laugh at cholera, and an army 
of him would overrun Afghanistan in no 
time if he should happen in that distracted 
quarter of the globe. When this redoubt- 
able individual is preparing for the com- 
ing holiday, he ought to have cast-iron 
trousers if his mother wishes any surcease 
from patching. 



/ ~PHE man with the flute will often prove 
to be an entertaining person. It 
must not be rashly inferred from the pre- 
vailing melancholy tone of his selections 
that he is of a sombre disposition. On 
the contrary, he is eminently social, and 
nothing gives him greater pleasure than 
to carry his instrument with him to small 
social parties and blow away at pathetic 
Scotch airs. If you are intimate with him, 
he will tell you many artless narratives 
of conquests he has made with his flute, 
of distress he has soothed with its soft 
and tender notes, and of serenades in 
which it has cut an interesting figure. 
The man and the flute become almost in- 



Short Range. 165 

separable. It will often supply the place 
of a sweetheart or wife. It is a relaxation 
from business cares. It answers instead of 
action or meditation. It is proof against 
rainy days and dismal nights. It invests 
an attic room with comfort and it reduces 
the quantity of cigars consumed, as one 
cannot play and smoke at the same time. 
For an instrument hardly intended to set 
up on its own hook, it makes its way with 
an astonishingly successful pretension. 
The enamoured flutist has no idea of ac- 
knowledging that his instrument is only 
an adjunct to violin, guitar, or piano. He 
quietly assumes that they are adjuncts to 
his flute. Set him playing in appreciative 
company, and he will play all night. For 
happy complacency, commend us to the 
man with the flute. The great Frederick 
found balm in it, and so did Richard 
Swiveller. It is a handy instrument. 
There is no breaking of strings and eter- 
nal tuning. It is portable. It has an 
aristocratic air. It has made many a land- 
lady wait on her dilatory lodger for ar- 
rears. It has lessened the horror of prison 



1 66 At Long and 

walls. It was the comrade of Goldsmith 
on his travels. An unseen flutist always 
excites curiosity. Hear him in some hotel 
room, and you will discover in yourself a 
certain desire to know what manner of 
looking individual he is, — whether he re- 
sembles Hamlet or some daintier type of 
man. That he retreats to his quarters to 
play his flute instead of pushing billiard- 
balls or quaffing in the bar-room provokes 
an ingenious concern in him. The cham- 
bermaid in the hall stops a moment to 
listen, and the sentimental young lady 
next door drops " Ouida" to drink in the 
peaceful airs. The flutist decidedly in a 
gentle way makes an impression as he goes 
along. He may at times be doleful, but 
his notes do not torture like a screaking 
fiddle or drive to madness like a blatant 
horn, and the general idea that this par- 
ticular musician conveys is one of almost 
pastoral simplicity and peace. So we bid 
him good-speed, and trust he may drive 
away all carking cares with his stops and 
keys. So long as he remains loyal to the 
flute, he will do no serious harm to the 



Short Range. 167 

world, and if he make indifferent music, it 
is not of that resounding and penetrating 
quality which leads a sufferer to make in- 
stant search for his revolver. No flutist 
was ever mobbed. He is the one lamb 
who is not molested. 



TT is not ambition or a distaste for domes- 
ticity that induces so many men who 
could be at ease in the bosom of their 
families to go out into the wide world. 
The cause of their wanderings is the house- 
maid. This damsel, with her broom and 
dust-pan, sweeps the despairing house- 
holder into the street, and compels him to 
hunt new quarters. If he crawled up the 
chimney she would find him there, and in 
inclement weather he cannot perch upon 
the roof. She swoops down on him whilst 
he is reading the morning paper, and with 
bland ferocity and smiling implacableness 
raises a cloud of dust about his chair, puts 
his eyes out, and makes him burn his mouth 
with his cigar. He can have no pleasing 
revery but this dreadful young person 



1 68 At Long and 

appears on the scene, armed and equipped 
to invade his day-dreams and make life a 
burden. He may secrete himself in any 
chamber of the house, and she will find 
him. He has no use for slippers or dressing- 
gown until he can be sure this assiduous 
female with a morbid mania for cleanliness 
is asleep and locked up in her own dor- 
mitory. Day brings her with the morning 
sun, and she cruises around with an alarm- 
ing vivacity that gives no hope of peace in 
any nook or corner. He may sigh for the 
tranquil delights of bachelordom, when 
his boots and pipes could ornament mantel 
or table; but it's no use to think over 
by-gone joys ; he is the victim of his en- 
vironments. Get out, my good man ; you 
are decidedly in the way. At nightfall 
you may slink in ; your arch enemy is 
invisible. 



"pVEN those who refuse to accept the 
sacred and inspiring legend of Easter, 
and consider this bright phase of the Chris- 
tian story a hopeful myth devised to save 



Short Range. 169 

man from total despair, cannot divest 
themselves of the conception of Deity 
which came in with the Christ, — a Being 
full of love for His creatures, instead of an 
implacable God, stern and pitiless. The 
opening spring-time is associated with 
the thought of a kindly Providence. The 
beauty of the visible world suggests an 
infinite loveliness, of which it is a faint 
symbol and prelude. Men at last have 
hope. They may hesitate over creeds, or 
fancy that they have done with them ; but 
the Christian hope, once in the air and in 
the heart, will not die. There is a new 
God — not Jehovah or Jupiter — and a new 
hope. The enlightened world celebrates 
an Easter willingly or unwillingly. It sees 
benignity where it once saw hidden and 
dreadful power. It finds in its own throb- 
bing bosom hints of compassion. 



TV/TEN are hardly as conscious as they 
might be, on a little earnest reflec- 
tion, as to how absolutely identified the 
word home is with the feminine component 



170 At Long and 

of it. The wife, mother, and daughters 
mainly make up what is most tenderly 
conveyed by the word home. Marriage 
and death demonstrate the fact with potent 
emphasis. Let the daughters marry and 
the wife and mother die, and where then 
is the home ? What usually takes place ? 
The home is broken up. The boys, if old 
enough, engage in business. The bereaved 
man finds a boarding-place and is isolated. 
Then he learns what his wife and daughters 
were to him, and what grace and joy have 
vanished forever. He will find no equiv- 
alent in the world, no substitute in new 
associations. Time may heal the scar, but 
it cannot give back the home which rested 
on the faces, the forms, the hearts of a few 
women. He is a rash man who would 
expedite by a day the loss from his house- 
hold of one of its feminine members by 
marriage, and he is blind and foolish 
beyond compare who does not watch over 
the health of his wife as a treasure to be 
guarded more than all earthly possessions. 
Men are not wanting in feeling, but they 
are careless in concerns of this nature. 



Short Range. 171 

They seem to take it for granted that what 
is will always be. They undervalue the 
blessings which encompass them in their 
domestic life and which use has made 
familiar, and it is only when the revolving 
years bring them face to face with deso- 
lation that they realize what they had and 
can have no more. 



C~}NE of the laments of age is that no 
new friendships are formed. It is a 
rather mournful fact that most persons who 
pass fifty years lose the gift of pleasing. 
The sparkling eye, the merry laugh, the 
hearty speech, the sympathetic manner, 
are all gone, and in place of these are a 
guarded bearing and a sober habit of 
thought and judgment. Good-looking 
young people, with their pleasant faces 
and enthusiasm, win friends off-hand ; but 
the saddened and mature man becomes 
more and more isolated. Those of his own 
kind give only what they receive, and 
the young shrink from him. He has lost 
the glow and the conquering vivacity of 



172 At Long and 

youth. He estimates the pursuit of life 
with frigid scepticism, and those who still 
delight to collect the dust in the race- 
course are offended at him. He may be 
ever so just and kind, but his exterior 
bears the scars of pain, and the average 
man or woman instinctively draws away 
from an invalid. If he be wise he will 
fall back upon books and a fishing-rod in 
season, and make friends in heaven, for 
his chance of making any down here is 
decidedly slender. Good tobacco and a 
clean brier-root pipe will also be found an 
excellent substitute for human affections. 



AMONG a man's personal belongings 
the pocket-knife holds an intimate 
and valued place. A veteran friend of 
this kind becomes the nucleus of many 
associations. It acquires a familiar and 
affectionate physiognomy. One learns to 
play with it in a caressing way as with 
something sentient. Even if there were 
no immediate practical use for it, its ab- 
sence would be felt. Sometimes it is in- 



Short Range. 173 

vested with a double interest by being a 
gift from relative or acquaintance. A 
knife kept through many years seems in 
some subtle way to become identified with 
one, to acquire a kind of silent kinship, to 
be a token that things are well. Its preser- 
vation suggests stability, continuity, per- 
manence. One certainly hates to part 
with this faithful companion, and when it 
is retired from wear and tear, its successor 
seems like an intruder and a stranger. 



'"PHE sound of falling water is always 
pleasing to the ear. It soothes and 
tranquillizes. It gently provokes to revery. 
In some lovely glen where a mountain- 
brook finds its musical way with liquid 
and voluble accents over successive ledges, 
falling into rock basins with a faint tinkling 
sound, or with a full, rounded, and articu- 
late note, or with a soft, hoarse murmur as 
if there were caverns beneath, the atten- 
tive ear gladly detects what a variety of 
melodies there are in its passage, and that 
its voice is not a monotone after all. 



174 At Long and 

Those who during summer retreat from the 
fashionable world, and in leafy ravines, 
where mosses glisten on the rocks, listen 
to the sweet syllables of the flowing water 
and let their spirits yield to the spell of 
perfect peace, will return to cities with a 
new secret of joy imparted to them at 
altars not built with human hands. Thrice 
blessed are they to whom this charmed 
message has been given in nature's fond 
sanctuary. 



/"\NE of the landmarks, if we may em- 
ploy the figure, of a certain period 
of life when men begin to settle down to 
tranquil habits and moderate ambition is 
the early cup of coffee. The young would 
look with smiling disdain upon this feature 
as counting for much in the matter of 
physical enjoyment, but after fifty, with 
the average American, the morning hour 
and the coffee ahead of breakfast-time are 
the sweetest incidents of the day. The 
grateful beverage blunts the fatigue of 
travel, mollifies the temper, disposes one 



Short Range. 175 

to serenity, and ushers in the day with 
orderly and amiable mood. The well- 
disciplined mortal who can add a few puffs 
of mild tobacco without detriment has 
little to ask of fortune. He imbibes phi- 
losophy with his Java and his Durham, and 
does not covet Stanley's restless energy or 
Vanderbilt's bonds. He has gone far to 
solve the problem of happiness without 
aid from metaphysicians or moralists, and 
whether in town or country, he extracts 
from the fresh hours of the dawning day 
more substantial, though subdued, satisfac- 
tion than people get from feasts and junk- 
etings, try how they will. That antecedent 
cup of coffee leaves a fragrant and sanitary 
flavor along the path marked by the clock 
which "old stagers" recognize as the 
charmed secret, the genuine comfort and 
solace of age. 



'T'HE blunt old lady who speaks her mind, 
but is kindly withal, sometimes occa- 
sions a commotion in social circles by her 
very frank utterances. But she is usually 
15* 



176 At Long and 

respected, and she can be depended on to 
rectify a good deal of the nonsense with 
which common conversation is liberally 
garnished. She is very useful in keeping 
young women from being as silly as they 
are capable of being when they fairly set 
out to outdo themselves in that line, and 
she is the proper terror of solemn bores 
who endeavor to make wise looks and sen- 
tentious platitudes pass muster for better 
things. This old lady is usually endowed 
with a good share of hard sense, keen 
observation, and despatch in the trans- 
action of such matters as fall to her 
charge. She is called eccentric by com- 
monplace people ; but her eccentricity is 
merely an independent way of thinking 
and acting, without anything vulgar or 
needlessly offensive about it. She will be 
found to be just as warm-hearted as she is 
sensible and shrewd, and if you will con- 
descend to talk and to act to the point 
without flummery or affectation, you will 
find her reasonably acquiescent and by no 
means as dogmatic as you might suppose on 
first acquaintance. This old lady is fortu- 



Short Range. 177 

nately solid in the matter of income, and is 
neither extravagant nor stingy. She de- 
serves her worldly possessions, and it may 
be depended on she does plenty of kind 
deeds without ever referring to them. She 
is always an interesting study. 



'T'HE old family horse is eminently re- 
spectable, but he will bear watching. 
After years of circumspect behavior he 
takes it into his head at times to be a little 
gay and festive, and has been known to 
spill out a carriageful of people and look 
on with sedate complacency, as if he had 
done a praiseworthy act. He is given to 
solemn cogitation, and doubtless deliber- 
ates some giddy performance as a relief 
from the bore of unvarying good conduct. 
He has been known to take a nip at the 
arm of the hostler, to plant his ancient 
hoof in the abdomen of a visitor to his 
stall, to stray away like a veritable vaga- 
bond, and, after facing a locomotive with 
the composure of a Turk, cut up the most 
deplorable shindies over an upraised um- 



178 At Long and 

brella. He is a trifle spoiled by women 
and children, who drive him with a loose 
rein, and he is notoriously addicted to the 
sulks when things don't go to suit him. 
That he has grown gray in faithful service 
must be freely admitted, but it is indubi- 
tably true that as he waxes in years he be- 
comes possessed with moods and vagaries 
that must not be overlooked. Like the 
antique sinner who said he had been try- 
ing to please the Lord for thirty years 
and had now concluded to please himself 
a while, the family horse may be counted 
on to indulge in some grotesque and dan- 
gerous pastimes if he is not observantly 
watched. He is by no means as sober 
and conservative as his benevolent visage 
indicates. 



HTHERE is a subtle element entering 
into the relations of the sexes which 
men rarely perceive. It is somewhat diffi- 
cult to describe, but in a rough way may 
be stated thus : Women have an entity 
of their own involving distinctive ideas, 



Short Range. 179 

tastes, feelings, and even a programme of 
life; they recognize it among themselves, 
value it, and respect it. Men so little take 
this into account that even the most 
chivalrous, consciously or unconsciously, 
regard woman as a sort of "annex" to a 
man, graceful and lovable it may be, but 
still chiefly important as identified with 
man, his comforts, passions, or ambitions. 
It is a survival of the times when woman 
was universally considered an inferior 
being. In certain lands she was even de- 
nied the possession of a soul. The modern 
man has recovered from this brutal idiocy, 
but he has things yet to learn, and one 
of them is that the emancipated sex has a 
mental and moral life of its own which 
may and does blend with that of men, 
but which has its own special "form and 
pressure," and which women, both in 
private communings and in their social 
relations with their own sex, esteem of as 
much value as the thoughts, aims, and 
activities of their masculine compeers. 
When a man gets an insight of this phase 
of woman's mind and career, and treats 



180 At Long and 

it with sense and consideration, he will 
find woman nearer and dearer to him than 
ever and he will be greatly improved him- 
self. It will open up a new field of intel- 
lectual experience and aid him in mind, 
manners, and the pursuit of happiness. 



T_T OW much more concerned people are 
about their faces, about the looking 
and the seeming, than about the real in- 
ternal facts ! This shows that to impress 
others is considered of more consequence 
than one's own genuine self-respect or the 
desire to walk 

" As ever in the great Taskmaster's eye." 

Yet it is rare that the face-mask long 
deceives. There is the voice likewise to 
train, and speech will often betray where 
the face is successful in some imposture. 
The face, too, cannot always be relied on, 
and the mouth is a notorious traitor. Far 
better to be than to seem and not to be. 
Far better to have a jaded or stupid face, 
if the inward spirit burn truly and brightly. 



Short Range. 181 

Far better to have honest wrinkles born 
of noble cares than a smooth visage kept 
placid by invincible selfishness. 

How long will the human masquerade 
go on ere people grow weary of its falsity 
and strive after real things? This ever- 
lasting thought about outward appear- 
ances and indifference about the inward 
constitution is the cancer of the age. 
When it is cured, and men and women 
become genuine, all faces will become 
beautiful, and the photographers will put 
away their cameras. 



"pEW persons anticipate that in becom- 
ing "cultivated" they are likewise 
becoming isolated. The finely-educated 
musical ear can no longer get pleasure 
from the fiddle at the rural dance. The 
critical literary taste is excluded from a 
large part of current reading matter which 
interests others. The mind conversant 
with science has no relish for loose con- 
versation on subjects within the province 
of science. Persons socially fastidious 



1 82 At Long and 

have few friends and no employment in 
general society. The woman who is sensi- 
tive and educated in affairs of the toilet 
is constantly shocked, and if her income 
and her tastes do not correspond, suffers 
more than she can tell, or could tell with- 
out incurring derision. So, too, those 
who have a high ideal, an exalted standard 
of thought and conduct, find themselves 
lonely in the crowd and saddened. The 
cost of superiority is alienation from those 
who are mediocre and satisfied. All who 
aspire and toil to attain uncommon excel- 
lence must pay this penalty. The world 
may admire them, but the world has a 
happiness of its own which it cannot give 
them and which they have disqualified 
themselves evermore from enjoying. This 
is an old story, but it always seems to be 
a fruitful source of wonder and pain. 



I '"THERE are delights in the hills for 

those who are willing to enjoy simple 

pleasures. The sunsets mark a distinct 

experience for city people, who rarely ob- 



Short Range. 183 

serve the sky and take their knowledge of 
the beauty of the physical world by hear- 
say. The lazy strolls through pastures and 
woods, the picnics along pleasant brooks, 
the cosey seat in some sylvan spot, the 
glass of fresh milk at a farm-house where 
honeysuckles run over the porch, the an- 
gling for chubs, the rides in the early 
morning, the swims for the young folks, 
the berries gathered from the bush and 
apples from the tree, the games (croquet, 
tennis, quoits), the sound sleep and keen 
appetite, — surely these are all good for 
body and mind and prepare one for the 
fall campaign of business or pleasure. 
They will compare favorably with the 
costly recreations of the fashionable places 
of resort, and they preserve one from a 
hasty conclusion that all is emptiness and 
vanity. The escape from the bore of 
dressing several times a day ought to be 
grateful to many women, and tired house- 
keepers certainly would enjoy a rural re- 
treat where they have no servants to look 
after and no daily round of other care to 
see to. All things considered, those who 
16 



1 84 At Long and 

select the pretty and relatively quiet places 
in the hills for ease in the summer have 
the best of the bargain. 



AMIDST all the respectful ceremony 
with which the closing hours of 
those whom the world honors are in- 
vested, there is commonly one figure — that 
of the faithful wife shortly to be left deso- 
late — about whom centres the sincerest 
and deepest human interest, more touch- 
ing and more significant to the universal 
heart than all the bulletins and condo- 
lences and lowered flags and resolutions 
and memorials of whatever kind. There 
is a glimpse of this one figure before she 
disappears from public notice, but all the 
world knows that her love is infinitely 
more precious than every worldly honor, 
and one whisper from her lips worth 
all the blare of Fame's trumpet. Death 
is a leveller, but its vaunted power can- 
not touch the love which a true and faith- 
ful heart cherishes, and which survives 
when the noisy world has ceased to utter 



Short Range. 185 

its laudations and has forgotten. Napo- 
leon was never forgiven for discarding 
Josephine. Andrew Jackson would have 
defended her against the globe in arms. 
What a thrill of responsive feeling affected 
every American when the stricken Gar- 
field, recovering consciousness, murmured, 
"Send for my wife" ! The spoils of suc- 
cessful ambition are mere dirt and. rags 
compared with the divine pearl of beauty, 
the deathless love of a good, pure woman. 



'T'HE "gentleman of the old school" 
bids fair to disappear. His stately 
and somewhat ceremonious courtesies, his 
measured and mellifluous speech, his fas- 
tidious toilet, his deliberate and conserva- 
tive methods of despatching affairs, — these 
appear to belong to the past. Nowadays 
the spirit of energy and rapidity pervades 
all things. Manners are kindly but ab- 
rupt. Merchants, manufacturers, bankers, 
judges, are substantially as plain, direct, 
and careless of conventional forms as 
people in humbler walks of life. The 



1 86 At Long and 

man intrusted with matters of moment 
who would pause to orate after the fashion 
of the old-school gentleman would be re- 
garded as a sort of Polonius ; a respecta- 
ble wind-bag. The plain and decisive 
style of the press has even communicated 
itself to literature proper. Social inter- 
course has abundant agreeable qualities, 
but dignity is not a conspicuous feature. 
Compare the epistolary correspondence of 
the day with the grave and high-flown 
letters of our grandfathers and grand- 
mothers. Assuredly the age of the loco- 
motive, the telegraph, and the telephone 
has apparently little use for the old-school 
gentleman. A few specimens, however, 
are still to be found in Pennsylvania, part 
of New England, and Virginia, and they 
are delightful, even if a trifle pompous and 
slow. 



TN the matter of mental perturbations, 
the real estate speculator perhaps un- 
dergoes as many pangs of pleasure and of 
pain as any other gambler. He has as 



Short Range. 187 

many dreams as a lover or a poet. He is 
exalted by trifles and depressed by them. 
He chafes at time as an element in his 
rose- colored calculations of the apprecia- 
tion of what he has bought, and yet it is 
only through the potent changes brought 
about by years that his sanguine hopes can 
possibly be realized. He grieves over 
chances lost and ponders the maps for 
chances still attainable. He has at his 
tongue's end the history of given tracts 
of land and what befell them and their 
owners. He can gaze at a vacant corner 
lot in a wilderness and people all the space 
about it with palaces, and he can make 
solitude vocal with the hum of multifarious 
industry. He follows rivers in search of 
harbors, and railroads to their termini, 
and jumps over a score of years in im- 
agining what is to take place in the way of 
settlement. The genuine real estate specu- 
lator is endowed with a fervid and fecund 
imagination. He is useful in any town, as 
he inspires all the citizens with hope for 
the future of their place. He will fill up 
ravines, pave streets, erect great marts of 
16* 



1 88 At Long and 

trade in his glowing fancy, and make a 
small village expand in the magical per- 
spective until the mind tires in the very 
thought of its avenues, vehicles, and re- 
sounding roar of activity. Such a man 
does not need liquor or hasheesh. He 
walks about in a world peopled with his 
own restless creations. He sees blocks of 
five-story stone buildings where the present 
gray squirrel frolics at ease and the rural 
damsel picks her little tin bucket of black- 
berries. He lives in a sphere of strange 
and fruitful metamorphoses in which the 
soil is constantly undergoing fluctuations 
in value, and is interesting solely as it 
verifies his predictions. What good such 
a man gets as he strolls through a growing 
city ! With what a Napoleonic eye he 
seizes on the vantage-ground here, there, 
everywhere ! He imparts his warmth to 
whoever shares his discourse, and there be 
many who will never be able to under- 
stand how so ardent and poetical a nature, 
so gifted with divination and so pregnant 
with generous statistics, should at last die 
poor and perchance not even own the little 



Short Range. 189 

spot of earth in which he sleeps. Put a 
surveyor's chain and a magnifying-glass in 
his coffin with him ; he will rest easier in 
such good company. 



HHHOSE who are resolutely determined 
to be candid and honest will find 
that ''Mrs. Grundy" is not so formidable 
after all. 

She is a mighty potentate for people 
who are at once shallow, time-serving, 
cowardly, and constitutionally inclined to 
the counterfeit rather than the genuine. 
She leads such people into tortuous paths 
full of affectations, roles foreign to their 
natures, subterfuges, falsehoods, and petty 
meannesses. 

Those who will at all hazards preserve 
their sincerity are fearless as eagles. Mrs. 
Grundy has no terrors for them. In fact, 
Mrs. Grundy secretly admires them and is 
also afraid of them. 

Nothing in the long run wins like ve- 
racity. It is the secret of healthy and 
brave living. The tricky do unwilling 



190 At Long and 

homage to it. The uncertain rank and 
file know there is leadership in it. It is 
of the essence of beauty itself. It makes 
plain faces beautiful. 

Mrs. Grundy may give temporary eclat 
to innumerable forms of deceit and hum- 
bug, but the solid mass of the world always 
does honor in the end to the real and the 
true. The honest man or woman is king 
and queen. When kindly sympathies are 
united with habitual candor, there is a 
magnetism that wins respect even from 
depraved people, and excites enthusiastic 
affection on the part of those who are open 
and straightforward. 

Poor Mrs. Grundy cannot affect this fair 
territory with her decrees. When she en- 
ters here, she must come as a suppliant 
and not as a sovereign. 



HPHERE is a certain charm about a rainy 
day in the spring and in the country. 
The hills and valleys appeal to the fancy 
through the mist ; old barns gather new 
poetic coloring in such an atmosphere ; the 



Short Range. 191 

trees assume quaint tracery, and the inevi- 
table crow, winging his slow flight athwart 
the landscape, adds to the pensive interest 
of the scene. But the true field for pic- 
torial enjoyment of a rainy day in spring 
is at some small harbor on the sea coast. 
The artist's eye can here surfeit with calm 
satisfaction. There will be a schooner or 
brig opportunely showing the weird outline 
of its masts and sails; a little steam-tug 
will manifest itself through the drapery 
of the fogs, the fine lines of an island 
here and there will disclose themselves at 
intervals, and sea-birds will dimly start up 
from the clouds like things suddenly born 
in the womb of the deep ; there is a skiff 
urged rapidly to the wharf, and an old tar 
stands motionless, watching it; there are 
mere spectral visions of yachts on the 
horizon, and ever and anon the mighty 
ocean seems to lift itself out of the driving 
showers and show for an instant the azure 
complexion with which it has during so 
many centuries enchanted the sons and 
daughters of men. How the rain and 
clouds envelop that stately light-house ! and 



192 At Long and 

as the day darkens primal chaos seems to 
have resumed its presidency of the world. 
Wait a while. The sun has brought its 
shining and glorious artillery to bear upon 
this waste of mists and shadows. A hun- 
dred craft now sit gracefully in clear view, 
the tall light-house is in steadfast relief, 
the gulls rejoice everywhere with quick- 
ened delight, the foam-crested waves of 
the generous sea sparkle merrily and free, 
and the sky and ocean rival each other in 
cerulean splendor. The coming and going 
of the rain should be witnessed on the 
coast of the sea. 



TS physiognomy a guide? It is largely 
taken to be such. 

" ' My face is my fortune, sir,' she said." 

The face may in the main certify to dis- 
position, but hardly to character. That 
is to say, a jovial person usually looks so, 
likewise an amiable person ; but a smiling 
countenance may go with a scamp, as 
Shakespeare noted, and a face of perfect 



Short Range. 193 

Greek outline may go with a nature shal- 
low and without true refinement. 

There are downcast-looking people who 
are as courageous as lions, and bold-look- 
ing individuals who have brazen impu- 
dence, but, put to the test, are arrant 
cowards. 

To a very keen-witted and observant 
person a speech of a half-hour with a new 
acquaintance will reveal more than the 
face, although Byron and Poe made a 
study of the mouth as the real witness of 
what is passing within. 

There are kindly-looking faces which 
do not accompany deep and abiding sym- 
pathies, and there are passive and nearly 
expressionless faces which give not the 
slightest hint of the warm, sterling hearts 
that the owners of these jaded counte- 
nances indubitably possess. 

On the whole, we should say that the 
face is no reliable index of character, and 
that King Duncan was right in remarking, 
"There is no art to find the mind's con- 
struction in the face." 

Still, it is an immense advantage in the 



194 -At Long and 

game of life to have a noble and attrac- 
tive face. The world accepts it and rarely 
looks deeper. 



'T V HE trout-fisher combines the pleasures 
of the sportsman of the field and the 
angler. He is in constant motion as he 
fishes down the tumultuous stream, and he 
can enjoy the superb scenery of the rocky 
fastnesses about him whilst his glittering 
fly sparkles on the rushing current. What 
variety of crag, water, and forest vegeta- 
tion environs him ! Now he is in a gorge 
where great fortresses frown down on him, 
with hemlocks in massive ranks, the sol- 
diery of the everlasting hills; then he 
passes into a shallow where the beaming 
waters sift placidly over golden sands and 
the dragon-fly pursues its tiny prey; then 
he descends some steep, insecure of foot- 
ing, where the roar of a miniature cataract 
salutes the ear ; at its foot a long stretch 
of smooth and shining water rolls evenly 
on like a gentle river under willows and 
skirted by green pastures ; and then, again, 



Short Range. 195 

he enters some solid gate-way of noble 
rock, whilst his line becomes taut, and in 
an instant the daintiest and loveliest fish 
that ever cleft pure waters flashes in the 
air with a beauty that no opal ever rivalled. 
All about him aromatic odors are distilled, 
a recluse bird of adjacent thicket pipes out 
a few clear notes of welcome, and high up 
amidst lofty pines the sad and constant 
beauty of the haunting sky strikes down 
into the shades below and envelops his 
soul for a passing moment with thoughts 
that transcend all speech. 



f SOMETIMES furtively visit a little 
private gallery in which a few pict- 
ures still hang which do not appear to 
have gathered dust and show no scars. 
It is true, I seem to see them through a 
fi'm of mellowy haze; but that is not the 
fault of the pictures. They are dewy fresh 
as the dawn. It is I who grope about in 
a mantle of mist. 

There is the ancient apple-orchard in 
which I once wandered with vagrant but 
17 



196 At Long and 

happy thoughts. Yonder the immemorial 
valley with its grain ripe for the sickle, 
glistening beneath the harvest moon. 
There the ellipse of hills. And there, 
oh ! there (your rod, please, Brother 
Walton !) is the palpitating " Horse 
Shoe," sweetest of all the pastoral streams 
which the voracious sea has ever en- 
gulfed, — musical, magical "Horse Shoe." 
I do not often tell my most intimate 
friends of this little gallery. 



TF, as science maintains, all sound-waves 
are still on their journey, it is per- 
missible to believe that in remote parts of 
the universe certain privileged beings are 
at this present moment enjoying for the 
first time sonatas of Beethoven and sym- 
phonies of Mozart. 



f" ET no one despise these busy valises 

that fly over the broad realm of our 

country, or misunderstand them. They are 

identified with the fruitful action which 



Short Range. 197 

has subjugated forest and plain. It is the 
trunks which are at war with thrift. 



TZEARY'S fascinating book on Norway 
makes one date hold the thought in 
its embrace for a while. About a.d. 840 
"the high-prowed, square-sailed viking 
ships" began to appear in numbers at the 
mouths of the great rivers of Western 
Europe. 



T^HE future bridegroom is a mere cipher, 
but the future bride is a potentiality. 
Her trunks are eloquent. Her bureau and 
chairs and bed hold treasures that speak 
of the coming ceremony. She walks, 
talks, and breathes in an atmosphere made 
up of dreams and realities. Letters pour 
in that are only half read, and her fare- 
well receptions are held in a mental mist, 
in which figures of persons and happy ex- 
changes of speech are alike phantasmal. 
In the horizon she sees the minister and 
the chosen man, and after a while the car- 



198 At Long and Short Range. 

riage-wheels will make a mystical tattoo as 
they rattle Graciosa and Percinet to Fairy- 
land, — i.e., Philadelphia, New York, or 
the regions beyond the sea. An old, dried- 
up, and fossilized bachelor must have very 
curious emotions in watching this pleasant 
comedy, as he of course regards it, played 
out until the curtain drops. He may even 
heave a sigh; but there will be sundry 
arithmetical cogitations to comfort the 
poor wretch. He takes a sad, grim satis- 
faction in reflecting that Graciosa and 
Percinet must some day step down from 
their cattche and do a little ciphering like 
the rest of the world. Bismillah ! 



THE END. 



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